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The Justice Department is turning to a decades-old statute and a never-before-used court to try to deport a woman accused of pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. NPR's Carrie Johnson was in the courtroom.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Congress created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court in 1996 to give the Justice Department another way to deport people who pose a risk to national security. That court sat dormant for 30 years until this month.
SEAMUS HUGHES: This is clearly a court that's building on the fly, right?
JOHNSON: Seamus Hughes is a counterterrorism researcher at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
HUGHES: The defense attorney was appointed a few days prior. Department of Justice is bringing up a legal pad that has the statute written out on it, and they're working through it. You see a court that's, you know, kind of beg, borrowing - they're stealing their way into a normal process.
JOHNSON: Chief Judge Joan Ericksen says it might not always look elegant, but she says she's committed to being careful, faithful to the Constitution and the rule of law. At the defense table was Nazira Haji Zada. She's 47 years old, a legal permanent resident of the U.S. originally from Afghanistan. Last year, her son and son-in-law were sentenced for plotting a terror attack on Election Day 2024. But rather than charge her with a crime, prosecutors turned to the new court. Most of the evidence remains classified. But prosecutors unsealed a bit, arguing she tried to radicalize her family members to support the terror group ISIS. Her public defender says he'll challenge the constitutionality of the court. Georgetown Law Professor Steve Vladeck has been following closely.
STEVE VLADECK: I think there is no doubt that there are serious due process concerns about the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, both in how it's designed and in how it would work in practice, especially with, you know, individuals who are lawful permanent residents or others who have clear and well-settled due process rights.
JOHNSON: Andrew Arthur is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes limits on immigration. He says when he worked as a prosecutor, he was usually able to find some other way to remove people for overstaying visas or entering the country without papers. So this case is an anomaly. And even if DOJ ultimately succeeds, Arthur says, lots of questions remain, including this one.
ANDREW ARTHUR: Finding a country to send this individual to will be a challenge because most countries do not want to receive other countries' terrorists.
JOHNSON: Carrie Johnson, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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