It’s not really clear what is meant by "She was granted admission to the United States on July 7, 1994, pending permanent residency. " - but it is clear that she applied for permanent residency in 1994 because she anticipated that diplomatic status would be revoked , which suggests to me that she filed for permanent residency while she was already in the US as the spouse of a diplomat. After all, if she wasn’t living in the US, what difference would it make if her husband’s diplomatic status was revoked?
Hmmm… I read “She was granted admission to the United States on July 7, 1994, pending permanent residency” to mean that she either was not in the United States (i.e., she stayed in Yemen and then moved here as part of the plan to become permanent residents after her husband’s diplomatic tour ended) or that she exited and returned to the United States under some sort of visa for people with pending applications (I don’t know enough about immigration law to know how that works). But that, in any event, effective July 7, she was no longer in the country on a diplomatic visa (and thus no longer enjoyed immunity) and took some affirmative act to change that status.
Lots of people join the US military at age 17 or 18. Do they not know what they are doing and are able to accept the results of doing so? Why make up excuses for this person?
I’d bet she’s hoping their will be a democrat for president in 2020 and she KNOWS Hillary or Sanders or Kamala Harris or some other democrat will give her an immediate pardon.
Also I’d bet that sometime in the future she will be a keynote speaker at a democratic national convention.
don’t ask me, I’m still trying to figure out how Lee Harvey Oswald was allowed back in the US after defecting to the USSR.
Because he was CIA the whole time. Didn’t you watch the movie?
But only if she lets them eat her babies, AMIRIGHTPEOPLE?
This is amazingly ridiculous.
This, and calls for convicting her of treason, run into a really tricky matter: nobody recognizes ISIS as an actual country, or even as a foreign government. Had she married into the Syrian regime, or the North Korean regime, maybe there’d be an argument she’d committed treason; but you can’t deny that an entity is a foreign government, and then convict someone of declaring allegiance to that entity because it’s a foreign government. Doesn’t work that way.
I believe that there are other charges she can (and should!) face: possibly proving material support or aid to a terrorist organization, for example. But treason’s technically off the table.
She joined a organization that was trying to impose a religious government through the use of guns and felt that the role of women was to get married, stay home, and have babies.
And you think she’s a potential Democrat?
Actually, if she calls Trump “powerful” and “the bestest most handsome President ever” and claims that she defected because she preferred ISIS to the tyranny of ObamaCare —- Trump will pardon her. And probably give her a job on his re-election campaign. Trump’s got nothing against treason if he’s the beneficiary.
This. Assuming she is actually repentent, my guess is her way of making amends is more likely to be by becoming a Christian fundamentalist rather than a liberal Muslim. People who are attracted to close minded, authoritarian ways of thinking might change their support from one authority group to a different one, but they probably won’t become liberals who are against authoritarianism. I’m not saying it never happens, but IMHO the former is more likely than the latter.
You’re probably right when it comes to revoking citizenship under 8 USC 1481. But I’m not so sure about treason. I don’t know why “enemies” under the treason statute could not include non-state actors/organizations. Treason doesn’t require declaring allegiance to a foreign state. It requires “lev[ying] war against [the United States] or adher[ing] to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere.” Why couldn’t a non-state actor be an “enemy”?
I don’t think any of the returning foreign fighters can be successfully prosecuted, to be honest. Access to evidence, witnesses, the ability to verify anything is going to make the threshold for reasonable doubt seems like an impossible reach. How many will actually even see a courtroom after a few expensive failed attempts at conviction?
Without a conviction I very much doubt there is any way to compel these people to: agree to any kind of deprograming, or any limits on use of social media, profiting from books, interviews etc. Are western nations to take up re-education camps?
I’m really not seeing any way for these countries to control what these persons do upon their return. They will most certainly gain celebrity, whether they wish it or not. It’s unlikely getting a job will be easy. If the talk show circuit/publishers offer them money why wouldn’t they take it? How is this NOT going to turn into an uncontrollable shit show?
I don’t have the answer, but you’d have to be blind not to recognize how fraught with difficulties this is going to be for EVERY involved nation. Most countries have laws against treason, but I don’t think any of those really anticipated this type of situation.
It will be interesting to see what each nation will choose to do, to help these people reintegrate.
Drop this hijack.
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Yes; lots of them come to that conclusion.
It depends on what the standard of required evidence is to obtain a conviction. Does convicting somebody of treason require that we have wintesses that the accused participated in a given battle on a particular date and that they served under Commander X and fought against American forces while on the battlefield? Or is it enough to show that they joined up with the enemy?
My apologies.
Constitutional rights, including due process, are not limited to citizens. The Constitution says “all persons” not “all citizens.”
Please don’t speak of ISIL like it is nothing more than a cult. It’s a terrorist organization whose participants have committed heinous, violent crimes against countless defenseless individuals. Your average confused teenager doesn’t leave the comforts of a stable home in a first world nation to join such a group in a war torn country with the intent of carrying out that group’s objective. That requires quite a bit of forethought and she had many opportunities to change her mind before she got on that plane and never looked back.
Plus she’s had five years to change her mind and only decided she was better off in America once her husband was killed, ISIL was crippled to the point of being defunct and she wound up in refugee camp with abominable living conditions. I’d consider giving her a pass if she tried to leave soon after joining them, but that’s not what happened. She has not demonstrated any bit of remorse for her actions. She just sounds inconvenienced. At 25 years old she is far past the point of being a confused teen. The “I was just a scared little girl” excuse won’t fly now. She’s also a national security concern, so there is a legitimate argument for keeping her out that isn’t about punishing her.
Sure, but that’s only relevant for a non-citizen who is in the U.S. If she is not a citizen (the moot point) she doesn’t have any right to come here, and U.S. constitutional protections are not relevant to someone who is neither a citizen nor in the U.S.