Quora Answer: Are People Who Joined ISIS & Burned Their US Passports Considered to Have Renounced Their Citizenship?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do you think people who have joined ISIS and burned their US passports should be considered as having renounced their citizenship?  Should we allow them to return to face treason charges or be left, and dealt with as war criminals and terrorists?”

Whilst burning your passport is an offence, it does not carry the penalty for sedition.  It is not the same as renouncing your citizenship because renunciation of allegiance to the state is a legal process.  Joining ISIS is a far more serious offence, that of sedition and waging war against the state.  The penalties for such an offence are severe, up to, and including capital punishment.

The state is not allowed, by international convention, to strip the citizenship of a citizen, and make that citizen stateless, unless said citizen is already a citizen of another country.  In any case, if we want to be pragmatic about this, and not emotional, a country would always want to take back citizens guilty of joining any terrorist group.  Simply stripping them of citizenship does not make these people go away.  They are still free, elsewhere, to reconnect with reformed terrorist networks and threaten the state.  It would make more sense to bring them back and ensure that they are taken into custody, tried and sentenced.  And if that sentence is death, it is a far more permanent solution than having them plotting overseas.