DOJ Files First-Ever Application to Activate Dormant Alien Terrorist Removal Court in 30-Year History

On July 15, 2026, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division filed the docket’s first-ever application, docketed 2026-TRC-1, to activate the Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC), a congressionally-created Article III court established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. §§ 1531–1537) that had never been used in the 30 years since its creation. The named respondent is Nazira Haji Zada, 47, a lawful permanent resident and Afghan national living in Fort Worth, Texas — the matriarch of a family in which her son Abdullah Haji Zada and son-in-law Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi were previously convicted on terrorism charges tied to a plot to carry out an ISIS-inspired mass shooting on Election Day 2024. The government’s theory, per DOJ’s own announcement, is that Zada “supported” that plot; NPR reported prosecutors specifically alleged she “tried to radicalize her family members to support” ISIS. Most of the evidentiary basis remains classified; an unclassified summary was filed publicly.

The case is assigned to ATRC Chief Judge Joan N. Ericksen (U.S. District Judge, District of Minnesota), who presided over the case’s first-ever hearing on July 30, 2026, in Washington, D.C. ATRC judges are designated by the Chief Justice of the United States from sitting U.S. district judges across different circuits, for staggered five-year terms (Federal Judicial Center); reporting identifies the panel’s other four members as Kenneth M. Karas (S.D.N.Y.), Karin Immergut (D. Or.), Timothy D. DeGiusti (W.D. Okla.), and Sara Elizabeth Lioi (N.D. Ohio) — that four-name roster is corroborated only by a secondary compilation (Wikipedia) as of this writing and should be treated as unconfirmed pending a primary designation order. The ATRC’s classified-evidence procedure (8 U.S.C. § 1534) requires the government to produce an unclassified summary sufficient for the respondent to prepare a defense; where a summary cannot be made safely available, a lawful-permanent-resident respondent — which Zada is — is entitled to a court-appointed special attorney cleared to review the classified material in camera on the respondent’s behalf, without being permitted to share its contents with the respondent directly. That special-attorney mechanism does not extend to non-permanent-resident respondents under the statute’s text. At the July 30 hearing, Zada’s court-appointed public defender — reportedly appointed only days before the hearing — said he intended to challenge the ATRC’s constitutionality; the court’s own inaugural order had already signaled skepticism of the filing, directing DOJ to submit supplemental materials before the application could proceed, rather than granting activation outright.

The move to activate a dormant parallel-track deportation court sits alongside the administration’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act against Tren de Aragua (2025-03-14–alien-enemies-act-tren-de-aragua-proclamation-10903), the Boasberg contempt fight over AEA removal flights (2025-12-08–boasberg-orders-doj-testimony-alien-enemies-act), and the SCOTUS shadow-docket stay that vacated TROs blocking AEA removals (2025-04-07–scotus-stays-trump-v-jgg-alien-enemies-act-removals) — a recurring pattern of the administration reaching for underused or historically dormant legal mechanisms that carry weaker due-process protections than the ordinary immigration-court system, whose judges were themselves purged in bulk in late 2025 (2025-12-08–immigration-judge-purge-100-judges-fired). Critics warn the classified-evidence provision could be weaponized for politically-targeted deportations without independent respondents able to contest the underlying evidence, extending the pattern already visible in ICE’s defiance of standing court orders in immigration-court arrests (2026-06-30–ice-nyc-immigration-court-arrests-defy-june-24-injunction) and in deportations proceeding despite active court orders (2025-10-25–ice-deports-souvannarath-despite-court-order-laos).