A court set up 30 years ago to expel immigrants accused of acts of terrorism from the country will hear its first case on Thursday morning: a request by the Justice Department to deport an Afghan woman living in Texas who prosecutors say is a supporter of the terrorist group Islamic State, or ISIS.
At a hearing in Washington before what is known as the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, prosecutors will offer their initial claims that the woman, Nazira Haji Zada, should be removed from the United States even though she is a lawful permanent resident. The court was created by Congress in 1996 to handle deportation proceedings that largely rest on classified information.
The government contends that Ms. Zada, 47, is connected to a foiled ISIS-inspired terrorist plot to commit a mass shooting on Election Day in 2024. Last year, both her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and her son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, pleaded guilty to charges connected to the plot and admitted trying to buy two AK-47-style rifles and 500 rounds of ammunition to carry it out.
“The allegations in this case show the matriarch of an ISIS-sympathizing family aiding in a plot to launch a mass casualty attack on American voters on Election Day,” the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said in a statement.
The case against Ms. Zada is an early test of the court where much of the evidence is presented in secret and defendants cannot challenge how it was collected. The Trump administration has used an expansive array of legal methods to carry out the president’s aggressive deportation agenda — many of them challenged in court. Now, it has sought to use the sweeping powers of the terrorist removal court for the first time in its 30-year history.
Ms. Zada has not been publicly charged with any crimes of terrorism and has no criminal history, according to court papers. Still, in an unclassified summary of her case submitted to the court, prosecutors said she “supported” the Election Day conspiracy and “pledged loyalty to ISIS.”
The summary also said she “worked to indoctrinate her children with ISIS ideology” and concealed a plan to relocate her family to ISIS-controlled territory from “her unsuspecting husband,” Abdul Haji Zada, who worked at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2016, court papers say.
The Alien Terrorist Removal Court is set up in a fashion similar to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews sensitive requests for surveillance warrants. It has five judges, including a chief judge, a position now held by Joan N. Ericksen, who also sits in Federal District Court in Minnesota.
The government filed its opening request to the court seeking to deport Ms. Zada on July 16, supported by multiple classified exhibits. The court held a closed-door hearing that same day, raising “a number of questions, both legal and administrative,” Judge Ericksen wrote in an order unsealed on Wednesday.
The government submitted a supplementary briefing on July 22 to bolster its case that Ms. Zada was what it described as “an alien terrorist” whose removal from the country through normal immigration procedures would “pose a risk to the United States’ national security,” Judge Ericksen wrote.
The judge ultimately found there was probable cause to proceed with the case and will preside over an initial hearing at the federal courthouse in Washington at 11 a.m.
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