DOJ Uses 30-Year-Old Terrorist Removal Court for First Time, Deports Afghan Woman Tied to Foiled ISIS Plot

The Justice Department announced Friday it secured the deportation of an Afghan woman through a federal court that sat unused for three decades, in what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called a "landmark case" for national security.

Nazira Haji Zada, 47, a lawful permanent resident living in Fort Worth, Texas, was removed to Afghanistan after conceding before the Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC) that she qualified as an "alien terrorist," according to the DOJ and newly unsealed court filings reported by CNN and CBS News. She waived her right to appeal. She is barred from returning to the United States.

The ATRC was created by Congress in 1996, in the wake of the first World Trade Center bombing, to let the government deport suspected terrorists without exposing classified intelligence in open court. Until this year, no administration had ever used it, according to CBS News and CNN.

What she was accused of

Haji Zada was never criminally charged. The DOJ instead accused her of supporting and helping radicalize her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, as the two men allegedly plotted an ISIS-inspired mass shooting timed to Election Day 2024, according to the DOJ and Fox News.

The two men were arrested in October 2024 after buying AK-47 rifles and ammunition from an undercover FBI agent, and both were later convicted on terrorism-related charges. Abdullah Haji Zada was sentenced to 15 years in prison; Tawhedi is awaiting sentencing, per the DOJ. Fox News and WFMD reported that the family sold possessions and bought one-way tickets to Kabul for everyone except the son and Tawhedi, who allegedly intended to carry out the attack.

CBS News reported the DOJ turned over roughly half a terabyte of documents to Haji Zada's lawyers to support its case that she was an alien terrorist. A joint filing dated August 20 shows both sides agreeing to her removal, and Chief Judge Joan Ericksen approved the removal order the same day, according to the Times of India and CNN.

The due-process fight nobody resolved

Haji Zada's public defenders, Matthew Farley and Mary Manning Petras, had previously signaled they would challenge the court's constitutionality. In a statement Friday, they said her decision to accept removal "should not be seen as an endorsement of this court's legitimacy."

"Dragging lawful permanent residents into court but refusing to show them or their attorneys the evidence that will be used against them is a plain violation of due process," the lawyers said, according to Fox News and WFMD. Under the ATRC's rules, targets and their attorneys cannot review the classified evidence against them, and unlike in a criminal trial, they cannot challenge how the government collected that evidence, as CBS News and CNN both reported.

That concern was never tested in front of a judge. CNN reported there is no indication in the unsealed filings that Judge Ericksen scrutinized the government's evidence beyond an initial approval earlier in the summer of 2026. Because Haji Zada settled rather than litigated, the underlying constitutional questions about the ATRC's secretive procedures remain unanswered, both CNN and its affiliate KRDO noted.

The admissions Haji Zada made in the ATRC proceeding cannot be used against her in any future criminal case, according to the Times of India, underscoring that this was an immigration removal, not a criminal conviction.

The administration's case

FBI Director Kash Patel called the outcome "a historic and vitally important step" in protecting the homeland, saying Haji Zada "betrayed" the country and "paid the price for that." Blanche said the case shows the DOJ "will use every tool at its disposal to protect our country."

Two family members were convicted for planning a mass shooting on U.S. soil, and the government says she supported that plot. Removing a non-citizen accused of aiding a terror plot using a legal mechanism Congress explicitly built for exactly this scenario is within existing law. It's a tool sitting on the books for 30 years that nobody bothered to use until now.

What remains unresolved is whether the ATRC's process would survive a real legal challenge. Fox News noted the administration turned to this "zombie" court after a federal judge in an unrelated deportation fight, James Boasberg, had pointed to it as an existing legal avenue. With Haji Zada's case now closed by agreement, the next test of the ATRC's constitutionality will have to come from a different case, if the administration brings one.