Trump Invokes Unknown Deportation Rule For The First Time Ever

U.S. immigration and naturalization documents with American flag — Photo: Pamela Au / Shutterstock

The Trump administration has quietly turned on a 30-year-old secret court to try to deport an Afghan mother it says helped plot an ISIS-inspired Election Day massacre.

Story Snapshot

A never-used terrorism removal court is now active for the first time in U.S. history.
Justice Department lawyers are targeting Nazira Haji Zada, an Afghan woman living in Texas.
Officials say she backed an ISIS-inspired plan to attack American voters on Election Day.
The case tests how far secret evidence and special courts can go in immigration enforcement.

A dormant terror court suddenly becomes real

For three decades, the Alien Terrorist Removal Court sat on the books like a locked vault no one touched. Congress created it in 1996 after major terrorist attacks overseas, but no president, Republican or Democrat, ever pulled the key. That changed when the Department of Justice filed the first-ever case this summer, turning a legal ghost into a real weapon in the immigration and terrorism fight. The move marks a sharp line in how this administration thinks about national security and foreign nationals.

The court is not a normal immigration courtroom where routine deportation hearings happen. It is a special tribunal made of five federal judges handpicked by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Its job is narrow but powerful: decide whether a noncitizen the government calls an “alien terrorist” should be removed from the United States using procedures built for classified intelligence, secret evidence, and fast action. This design matches a world where terrorist plots can move faster than public trials.

The target: an Afghan mother in Texas tied to an ISIS-inspired plot

New filings and news reports reveal that the first person to ever face this court is Nazira Haji Zada, a 47-year-old Afghan woman living in Fort Worth, Texas. The Department of Justice says she is the matriarch of an ISIS-sympathizing family and claims she helped support a plan for a mass shooting attack on American voters on Election Day. Her son has already been convicted in a related ISIS-inspired scheme to disrupt the 2024 election, which prosecutors say helps build the case around her.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche personally approved the application to use the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, a step the law clearly requires for any case. In his public statement, he framed the move in stark terms, saying Congress built this court “to remove from the United States alien terrorists who never should have been here in the first place,” and that the allegations show a mother aiding a mass casualty plot against voters. For many Americans who value strong national defense and election security, that framing will sound like common sense: if a foreign national knowingly backs an ISIS-inspired attack on our elections, they should not stay here.

How the Alien Terrorist Removal Court process works

To activate this court, the Justice Department had to file a detailed statement of facts and certify that Haji Zada’s presence is a threat to national security. A single judge from the court first reviews the application, mostly under seal, to decide whether there is probable cause. Chief Judge Joan Ericksen has now found that threshold met, triggering the first public status hearing in the court’s history. That hearing, set at the federal courthouse in Washington, is the first time this hidden system steps into public view.

The law behind this court lets the government use classified and secret evidence when it claims exposing the details would harm national security. The noncitizen may receive only an unclassified summary of the government’s case, and even that can be withheld if the court agrees it would risk sensitive information. Those rules tilt the process toward the executive branch and the intelligence agencies. Supporters say that is necessary when dealing with foreign terrorists who use encrypted apps and overseas networks. Critics worry it undermines due process when someone faces life-changing deportation based on evidence they may never fully see.

ISIS links, Election Day, and the politics of security and secrecy

Media reports and court-watchers say the alleged plot tied to Haji Zada involved an Election Day mass shooting aimed at American voters in 2024. That detail matters. Attacks on elections are not just crimes; they are assaults on the core of the country’s self-rule. For conservatives who have long warned about weak immigration enforcement and terror risks, a case like this feels like proof that tough tools are overdue. A special court focused on alien terrorists fits that view: foreign nationals who back jihadist plots against our democracy should not get the same leeway as ordinary overstays.

The government has activated the constitutioanlly dubious "Alien Terrorist Removal Court" for the first time in its 30 yrs of existence to speedrun the deportation Nazira Haji Zada to Afghanistan.

As with many repressive terrorism laws, @ADL was a key player in its creation. 🧵 https://t.co/cVfcPaGX1H

— darryl li (@dcli) July 30, 2026

At the same time, civil-liberties groups and immigration advocates are sounding alarms. They argue the Alien Terrorist Removal Court operates with deep secrecy, thin public oversight, and rules that let the government rely on evidence that would face more challenge in normal courts. Some call it a “star chamber,” borrowing a term for secret royal courts in old England that crushed dissent. Their fear is simple: once a government has a secret path to deport someone by calling them a terrorist, pressure grows to stretch that label.

What this first case means for the future

This first case against Nazira Haji Zada is more than a single deportation fight; it is a stress test for a little-known part of American law. If the Justice Department proves its claims to the court’s higher standard at the removal hearing, it will set a precedent for how to use this tool against other suspected foreign terrorists. If the case falters, or if judges push back on secret evidence and narrow summaries, it could limit how often administrations reach for this court in the future.

For now, the facts we have show a government that sees a foreign-backed election attack as a red line and is willing to use every legal mechanism Congress has given it to respond. The open questions center on how much of its evidence will ever see daylight and whether this special court can balance hard-nosed national security with basic fairness. That balance will shape not just Haji Zada’s fate, but how America polices the line between immigrant and “alien terrorist” in the years ahead.