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The Trump administration tried Thursday to deport an Afghan national living legally in Texas through a secretive court never before used since its creation 30 years ago.
The Justice Department told a judge in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court that 47-year-old Nazira Haji Zada should be expelled from the U.S. because she is a supporter of the Islamic State. Zada was not charged with a crime, although her son and son-in-law have been convicted of conspiring to launch an ISIS-inspired attack.
A judge did not immediately issue a decision.
Created in 1996, the little-known court provides a mechanism for the government to quickly deport noncitizens suspected of ties to terrorism. The government does not have to make its evidence public, or even share it with its targets — who are not allowed to challenge the government on how it collected the evidence.
Congress established the court “after immense political pressure from the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administrations and wide bipartisan support to serve as a forum to prosecute the most complex and difficult national security immigration removal cases while protecting vital classified information from public disclosure,” Aram Gavoor and Timothy Belsan wrote in a whitepaper for George Washington University’s law school.
The court sat dormant for decades, while its five judges tended to their duties in other federal district courts. Until Thursday.
ISIS ties alleged
FBI agents arrested Zada on Tuesday at her home in Fort Worth. An FBI memo dated July 15 and released by the Justice Department said Zada “has formally pledged loyalty to ISIS” and had “worked to indoctrinate her children with ISIS ideology.”
A press release from the Justice Department described Zada as “the matriarch of an alien Afghan family” and said she was being deported “for her role in a plot to commit an ISIS-inspired mass shooting on Election Day in 2024 for which her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, were previously arrested and convicted.”
A representative of Zada could not be reached for comment.
In court Thursday, her lawyer, Matthew Farley, argued that the proceeding violated Zada’s constitutional rights, according to The Associated Press. “This entire scheme is in violation of due process and unconstitutional,” said Farley, an assistant federal public defender. “This is a runaround for bringing a criminal case.”
But in a statement, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche accused Zada of being the head of “an ISIS-sympathizing family aiding in a plot to launch a mass casualty attack on American voters on Election Day.”
He said Congress created the court to deport “alien terrorists who never should have been here in the first place.”
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