Justice Department seeks to deport mother of convicted Islamic State group supporter

An obscure court set up 30 years ago to expel immigrants accused of terrorism from the country heard its first case Thursday, as the Justice Department asked a federal judge to deport an Afghan woman who prosecutors say supports the Islamic State group.

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The request took place at a nearly hourlong hearing in Washington before what is known as the Alien Terrorist Removal Court. During the hearing, prosecutors presented 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 Zada, 47, is connected to a foiled terrorist plot inspired by the Islamic State 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 they had tried 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 before the hearing began, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group. Zada, who appeared before a packed courtroom in a creamy white headscarf and flowing blue pants, was arrested Tuesday at her home in Fort Worth, Texas, the court’s chief judge, Joan Ericksen, said.

The case against Zada is a test of a 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 is seeking to use the sweeping powers of the terrorist removal court.

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 Islamic State-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 drawn from courts around the country, including Ericksen, who also sits on the US District Court in Minnesota.

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“This is the court’s first case, and the court is in the early stage of implementing procedures,” she said as the hearing opened, acknowledging that there “may be moments of ineloquence” because the court “laid dormant and untested for three decades.”

Matthew Farley, one of Zada’s lawyers, began his remarks to Ericksen by asking that his client be released. He called the administration’s efforts to deport her a “run-around to bringing a criminal case” — one that afforded the government a lower burden when it came to proving a nexus to terrorism.

Farley also raised concerns that prosecutors did not plan to grant the defense access to the classified material in the case. But while Ericksen rejected his request for Zada’s release, she said her “working presumption” would be that the defense team will be able to review the classified information underlying the case.

The government filed its opening request to the court seeking to deport Zada on July 15, supported by multiple classified exhibits. The court held a closed-door hearing that next day, raising “a number of questions, both legal and administrative,” Ericksen wrote in an order unsealed Wednesday.

The government submitted a supplementary briefing last week to bolster its case that 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,” Ericksen wrote.

The judge ultimately found there was probable cause to proceed with the case and will soon set out a schedule for further filings and hearings.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.