The Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC) of the United States, which has been established for nearly thirty years, held its first-ever public hearing on Thursday, July 30, officially commencing the trial of the first deportation case.
The ATRC has special legal authority to initiate deportation proceedings specifically for individuals identified by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as “foreign terrorists.”
The defendant in this case is an Afghan woman named Nazira Haji Zada, who holds lawful permanent resident status in the United States. The DOJ accuses her of being a supporter of the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS). The DOJ officially submitted the deportation order application to the ATRC on July 15.
On July 28, FBI agents arrested Zada at her home in Fort Worth, Texas.
According to an FBI memorandum dated July 15, Zada is suspected of “supporting” her relatives in plotting IS-inspired attacks within the United States and getting her children to pledge allegiance to the organization.
Court documents reveal that Zada’s son and son-in-law were convicted in Oklahoma for participating in a conspiracy to attack the 2024 Election Day.
Her son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, a former security guard at a US military base in Afghanistan, faced legal sanctions for allegedly planning to purchase weapons and orchestrate attacks.
He admitted to conspiring with IS and attempting to provide material support. Prosecutors stated that Tawhedi took various steps to advance his attack plan, including ordering AK-47 rifles, selling family assets, and purchasing one-way plane tickets for his wife and children to return to Afghanistan.
Zada’s son, Abdullah Haji Zada, was sentenced to 15 years in prison last November. Court records show that he had agreed to leave the United States upon release.
During the hearing, Zada’s defense attorney, federal assistant public defender Matthew Farley, argued that the federal government’s use of ATRC to seek Zada’s deportation was a “ploy to evade criminal prosecution, violating due process and the Constitution,” and urged the chief judge to dismiss the charges and release the defendant immediately.
Chief Judge Joan Ericksen, who presided over the hearing, rejected the request for immediate release. However, she noted that the defense could file a motion during the continued trial proceedings in Washington, DC. Ericksen is a senior federal judge from the Federal District Court in Minnesota.
On the day of the trial, Zada appeared in court under the custody of US marshals, following the proceedings through a translator and nodding in response to the judge’s questions. The judge pointed out that although the case involves classified information, it is a civil immigration case based on immigration law rather than a traditional criminal trial.
DOJ lawyer Hayden O’Byrne read a brief overview of the case in court, highlighting that some information (from the FBI’s investigation of Zada) involving classified information could not be fully disclosed.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche later emphasized in a statement that the primary purpose of establishing the ATRC court by Congress was to deport “foreign terrorists who should not be in the United States in the first place.” He stated that “someone sympathetic to IS and assisting in planning a large-scale attack on American voters on Election Day has no place in the United States.”
The ATRC, established under the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, is a civil special court responsible for handling deportation cases involving foreign individuals suspected of being terrorists. This hearing marked the first public hearing in the history of the court, as it has been rarely utilized in the past.
The ATRC is composed of five federal district court judges from five different federal judicial circuits in the United States, appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States.
(Reference: This article is based on reports from The Associated Press)