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Justice Department Uses Long-Dormant Terrorism Court for First Time to Remove Afghan Woman
Nazira Haji Zada, a lawful permanent resident accused by the Justice Department of supporting relatives who plotted an ISIS-inspired Election Day attack, has been removed to Afghanistan in the first case ever brought before the Alien Terrorist Removal Court. The case revives a three-decade-old national-security procedure that permits classified evidence and has never before been tested in an actual removal proceeding.
The Justice Department has completed the first removal ever ordered through the United States Alien Terrorist Removal Court, using a specialized tribunal created three decades ago to deport an Afghan lawful permanent resident accused of supporting family members who plotted an ISIS-inspired mass shooting around Election Day 2024.
Nazira Haji Zada, 47, who had been living in Fort Worth, Texas, was returned to Afghanistan after agreeing to an order of removal and ending her challenge to the government’s case. The Alien Terrorist Removal Court entered the order on August 20, and the matter remained under seal until the Justice Department announced on September 11 that she had been removed from the United States.
The outcome is historically significant because Congress created the court in 1996 but no administration had previously used it to conduct a removal case. For decades, the tribunal existed largely as a dormant national-security mechanism designed for an unusual category of immigration proceedings: cases in which the government says a noncitizen is involved in terrorism but believes ordinary removal procedures could expose classified intelligence or threaten national security.
Zada’s case became the first test of that system.
The Justice Department described her as the matriarch of a family connected to a planned attack that federal investigators disrupted in October 2024. Her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and her son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, were arrested after purchasing two AK-47-style rifles, ammunition and magazines from an undercover FBI employee. Prosecutors said the weapons were intended for a mass-casualty attack on or around November 5, 2024, Election Day.
Unlike the two men, however, Nazira Haji Zada was not criminally charged in connection with the plot. The government instead pursued her through the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, a civil removal process with different procedures and a different burden of proof from a criminal prosecution.
That distinction is central to understanding the case. In a criminal trial, the government must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Under the statute governing the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, the government bears the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that a noncitizen is removable as an “alien terrorist.” The Federal Rules of Evidence do not apply in the same way they would in an ordinary federal criminal case, and the statute allows the government to protect classified evidence from public disclosure under special procedures.
Congress established the court through the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The statute directs the chief justice of the United States to designate five federal district judges from five different judicial circuits to serve on the tribunal. The judges serve limited terms on the court while continuing to hold their regular Article III judicial positions.
Chief Judge Joan N. Ericksen presided over Zada’s case. Court records show that the government began submitting materials during the summer, including an application for removal, unclassified evidence summaries and classified supplements. A public hearing was held after Zada was arrested in July.
The special court is designed to operate in two stages. The government first seeks approval to initiate the removal proceeding. If that application is approved, the law calls for a removal hearing at which the government must establish that the respondent falls within the statutory definition of an alien terrorist.
The hearing itself is generally public, and the person facing removal has a right to counsel. But classified evidence can be reviewed by the judge outside the presence of the respondent and the public. The government ordinarily must provide an unclassified summary sufficient to allow the respondent to prepare a defense. In certain circumstances involving lawful permanent residents, the law also provides for a security-cleared special attorney who may review classified information without disclosing it directly to the respondent.
Those provisions immediately became one of the most controversial aspects of Zada’s case.
Her court-appointed lawyers argued that the system placed her at an unfair disadvantage because she could not personally review all of the evidence the government intended to use. At the first public hearing, her defense challenged the legality and constitutionality of the process and argued that the government should not be able to rely on secret information while limiting the defense’s ability to confront it in the ordinary way.
The court did not dismiss the proceeding at that stage, and litigation continued through August over detention, access to information and the mechanics of the never-before-used tribunal.
Before the court reached a fully contested final merits hearing, however, the case changed course. Zada agreed to an order of removal. The Justice Department said she conceded that she qualified as an “alien terrorist” for purposes of the proceeding, waived further challenges and accepted removal to Afghanistan.
Her decision ended the first case without a full judicial opinion resolving many of the constitutional questions her lawyers had raised. That means the government achieved the removal it sought, but the broader legality of the court’s classified-evidence procedures remains largely untested in contested appellate litigation.
Zada’s attorneys have emphasized that her agreement to leave the United States should not be read as a judicial endorsement of every feature of the tribunal. Reporting by the Associated Press, Reuters and other outlets noted that her defense continued to criticize the process even after the removal was completed.
The government’s factual allegations against Zada were tied closely to the criminal cases against her son and son-in-law.
Tawhedi admitted that from June through October 2024 he conspired with at least one other person to obtain firearms and ammunition for an attack on behalf of the Islamic State. Justice Department records say he communicated with an ISIS facilitator and discussed preparations for the attack, including whether 500 rounds of ammunition would be sufficient.
He pleaded guilty in June 2025 to conspiring and attempting to provide material support to ISIS and to a firearms offense connected to a federal crime of terrorism. He is awaiting sentencing.
Abdullah Haji Zada was 17 when he was arrested with Tawhedi in October 2024. He later entered a guilty plea as an adult to knowingly receiving, attempting to receive and conspiring to receive firearms and ammunition to be used in a federal crime of terrorism.
He was sentenced in November 2025 to 15 years in federal prison, the statutory maximum for the offense. As part of his plea agreement, he accepted a judicial order requiring his removal to Afghanistan after completing his prison sentence and waived most avenues for contesting that future removal.
Those criminal convictions provide an established legal record concerning the two men. The allegations against Nazira Haji Zada were different because she was not accused in a criminal indictment of personally planning to carry out the shooting.
The Justice Department instead alleged that she supported the family’s preparations and helped conceal what the government described as pro-ISIS activity within the household.
According to the government’s public filings and earlier criminal complaint, members of the family began liquidating property in 2024. Federal investigators said furniture, computers, a mobile phone and two vehicles were sold. Zada signed a contract to sell the family home.
The family also purchased one-way airline tickets to Kabul for Zada and several minor children shortly before the planned Election Day attack, according to the Justice Department. Abdullah and Tawhedi, the two men who were later arrested in the firearms transaction, were not booked on those flights.
The government argued that this pattern was evidence supporting its claim that Zada knew about and assisted preparations connected to the attack. In an unclassified filing, federal officials also alleged that she worked with Tawhedi to radicalize the family and conceal pro-ISIS teaching from her husband.
Her lawyers disputed the government’s interpretation. They argued that selling a home, liquidating household property or planning international travel did not by themselves establish that Zada knew a terrorist attack was being prepared. Her defense maintained that the public evidence did not show that she personally joined the criminal conspiracy for which her relatives were prosecuted.
That disagreement demonstrates why the legal vehicle chosen by the Justice Department mattered. Because Zada was not being tried for a federal crime, prosecutors did not need to obtain a criminal conviction or prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she knowingly participated in the planned attack.
Instead, the government invoked a section of immigration law specifically created to remove noncitizens alleged to have terrorism connections when national-security evidence may be too sensitive for ordinary public proceedings.
The term “alien terrorist” in the statute is a legal immigration classification rather than a separate criminal conviction. A removal order under the Alien Terrorist Removal Court does not by itself mean the respondent was convicted of terrorism in federal criminal court.
In Zada’s case, that distinction is especially important because her son and son-in-law pleaded guilty to federal offenses, while she did not face comparable criminal charges. The Justice Department nevertheless asserted that her conduct met the immigration-law definition required for removal and ultimately obtained an agreed order.
The dormant court was created during a period when Congress was expanding federal counterterrorism powers after several major attacks in the United States and abroad. Lawmakers were concerned that ordinary deportation cases could force the government to choose between disclosing highly sensitive intelligence and abandoning efforts to remove suspected terrorists.
The Alien Terrorist Removal Court was intended to provide another option. Yet for roughly 30 years, administrations of both parties relied on ordinary immigration proceedings, criminal prosecutions and other national-security authorities instead. The specialized court remained staffed but unused.
That changed in July 2026, when the Justice Department filed the Zada matter as the first case in the tribunal’s history.
The court’s unusual structure has generated competing assessments. Justice Department officials have portrayed it as a lawful national-security tool specifically authorized by Congress. They argue that the procedure balances removal authority with protections for classified intelligence and provides counsel, judicial review and appellate rights.
Civil-liberties advocates and Zada’s lawyers have focused on the opposite side of that balance. They argue that a lawful permanent resident facing removal should not be required to defend herself against important evidence she cannot fully inspect. Critics also question whether an unclassified summary can always substitute for direct access to the underlying information.
The statute does provide several safeguards. The respondent receives notice of the allegations, has a right to counsel, can present evidence and question witnesses subject to the classified-information rules, and may appeal a removal decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The government also bears the burden of proof.
But the same law permits classified evidence to be reviewed by the judge in camera and ex parte when the attorney general determines that disclosure would create a national-security risk. The respondent and the public may receive only an unclassified summary rather than the original intelligence.
That is the feature most likely to be tested if the Justice Department brings future cases against respondents who choose to litigate all the way through judgment and appeal.
Zada’s case did not produce that test because she chose removal before the tribunal issued a contested final decision on the merits.
The government nevertheless has described the result as proof that the court can function as Congress intended. Justice Department officials said the case demonstrated a way to remove a noncitizen accused of supporting terrorism while protecting sensitive national-security information.
Whether the Zada proceeding becomes a model for additional cases remains uncertain. The legal threshold for initiating the special process is specific, and the Justice Department must justify why ordinary removal procedures would create national-security risks. The court is therefore not a replacement for the immigration courts that handle the vast majority of deportation cases.
It is instead a narrow mechanism designed for terrorism-related cases involving unusually sensitive evidence.
The political and legal significance of the first use is therefore broader than Zada alone. A tribunal that existed only on paper for three decades now has a public docket, a completed removal order and a set of procedures that federal lawyers and judges have begun applying in practice.
That development will likely attract scrutiny from immigration lawyers, national-security specialists and civil-liberties groups because it creates a real-world precedent even though it does not yet produce an appellate ruling validating the court’s most controversial features.
The case also shows how immigration and criminal law can move on separate tracks after a terrorism investigation. Tawhedi and Abdullah were prosecuted for federal crimes and convicted through the criminal justice system. Zada, a lawful permanent resident, was placed into a removal proceeding and never convicted of a terrorism offense.
Those differences are not technical details. They determine the government’s burden of proof, the rights available to the defendant or respondent, the type of evidence that can be used and the consequences of the final judgment.
For Abdullah, the consequence is a 15-year prison sentence followed by removal. For Tawhedi, sentencing remains pending after his guilty plea, with removal expected under a separate order after any prison term. For Nazira Haji Zada, the consequence was removal without a criminal conviction arising from the Election Day plot.
The Justice Department says the three cases are linked by a common factual story: an ISIS-inspired attack planned for Election Day, a firearms purchase intercepted by the FBI, family preparations before the planned violence and support within the household.
The defense position in Zada’s case was narrower: the criminal conduct of relatives did not automatically prove that she knowingly participated in or supported their terrorist plan, and the government should not be permitted to establish otherwise through a process that limited her access to classified evidence.
Because the case ended by agreement, a court did not fully resolve that dispute after a complete adversarial hearing.
The historical result is nevertheless clear. The Alien Terrorist Removal Court has now been used for the first time since Congress created it in 1996. A lawful permanent resident was ordered removed through that system, the order was carried out, and the previously dormant tribunal has entered active federal practice.
The next question is whether Zada’s case remains a one-time use of an obscure national-security law or becomes the beginning of a broader Justice Department strategy.
If future respondents contest removal through trial and appeal, federal courts may eventually have to decide questions that Zada’s case left open: how much classified evidence can be withheld, how detailed an unclassified summary must be, what due process requires for lawful permanent residents and whether the special procedures survive constitutional scrutiny.
For now, the first case ended without those questions receiving definitive appellate answers.
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