US completes first deportation through secretive terror court

Defendant conceded terrorist designation, waived appeal

The Department of Justice on Friday completed the United States’ first-ever deportation through the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, a secretive federal tribunal that had sat unused for three decades after its 1996 creation. Afghan national Nazira Haji Zada, 47, who had been living in Fort Worth, Texas, was removed from the country after appearing before the tribunal last month and conceding she was an “alien terrorist,” the DOJ said. The department’s announcement came on the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Zada and her lawyers “conceded that she is an alien terrorist” and waived her right to appeal the removal order, according to the Justice Department’s statement. The court did not issue a ruling in her case.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court was created as part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and consists of five district court judges. Its rules allow the Justice Department to submit applications under seal and without notice to the person sought for deportation, and require the department to show three elements before proceeding to a removal hearing.

Until Zada’s case, no administration had ever made an application to the court. The Justice Department’s Friday announcement marked the first invocation of the statute in the tribunal’s three-decade history.

The Justice Department has accused Zada of supporting family members in a plot to commit an “ISIS-inspired mass shooting” on Election Day in 2024. Her son and son-in-law have already been convicted in connection with the planned attack. In court documents, the government alleges that Zada had planned to move to Afghanistan with her siblings while her son and son-in-law carried out the 2024 plot. The FBI intercepted the planned attack.

The allegations against Zada arose in the criminal case against her son-in-law, Nazir Tawhedi.

“This landmark case, resulting in the prompt removal of this alien terrorist to her country of origin, is a win for national security and the rule of law,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Those who support and condone terrorism should not be living in the United States, and this first-ever case before the ATRC shows how the Department will use every tool at its disposal to protect our country.”

FBI Director Kash Patel added: “This is a historic and vitally important step in our work to protect the U.S. homeland from terrorism. An individual who supported a plot by ISIS-sympathizing family members to commit an attack in America has paid the price for that.”

The court’s three-decade dormancy has been understood by some analysts as evidence of serious misgivings by successive administrations and Congresses about its constitutionality. In a 2012 article, counterterrorism scholar Stephanie Cooper Blum wrote: “Many scholars have argued that the ATRC deprives aliens of procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment; hence, its non-use may reflect a fear that if it was used to remove aliens based on classified evidence, it may be struck down as unconstitutional. In this respect, it may be a case of ‘use it and lose it.’”

Because Zada conceded the allegations and waived her appeal, the case produced no ruling on the statute’s constitutionality. The legal questions surrounding the tribunal — including whether its reliance on classified evidence can be squared with Fifth Amendment procedural protections — remain unresolved.