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January 13,2022

Anna Murray 

Hoda Muthana, 25, is being held in a Syrian refugee camp after the US Supreme Court denied her request to return to the United States with her toddler son. Muthana was born in New Jersey due to her father's position as a United Nations diplomat, and she left her home in Birmingham, Alabama, in 2014 to join the Islamic State militant group (ISIS). On January 10, the Court declined to hear an appeal filed on her behalf by a relative.

She left the United States at the age of 19 and traveled to Raqqa, Syria, through Turkey, where she married an Australian jihadist and later a Tunisian. They both died fighting for ISIS, and she married a Syrian in secret. As Islamic State militants were losing the remainder of their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria and fleeing to refugee camps, in 2018, Muthana surrendered to the Syrian Democratic Forces, which are backed by the United States.

Former President Barack Obama decided to revoke her passport while she was abroad. Despite her birth in the United States, a federal judge ruled in 2019 that the Obama administration correctly determined Muthana was not a citizen. Diplomats' children are not eligible to birthright citizenship.

Nonetheless, the former University of Alabama student, who was 24 at the time, voiced fear for her son's future and appealed for forgiveness from the US and her family.