The Donald Trump administration deported an Afghan migrant after using a court for the first time to expel alleged terrorists, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported on Friday. The woman, according to the DOJ, admitted to supporting a plan to carry out an attack inspired by the Islamic State on the day of the 2024 elections. However, her defense denounced a lack of evidence during the process, according to court documents.
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The case was quickly seen in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC), never before used since its creation in 1996. The DOJ’s request was filed on July 15, the ATRC approved the expulsion on August 20, and the migrant was removed from the United States five days later. It is not possible to fully review the documents submitted by the Government to that court, as some remain secret due to national security matters.
The DOJ accused Nazira Haji Zada, 47, of supporting the plan to carry out a mass shooting for which her son and son-in-law were convicted. The men, according to that department, bought weapons and ammunition from an undercover agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Abdullah Haji Zada, the son, and Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, the son-in-law, were arrested on October 7, 2024. Abdullah pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, the DOJ detailed. Tawhedi also pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
“As the matriarch of the family, she supported the plot to carry out the mass shooting inspired by the Islamic State on the day of the 2024 elections,” the DOJ said in a statement. “This is the first case brought before the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, created by Congress decades ago, and which no Administration had ever used,” it added.
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The defense says the court is unconstitutional
The defense, however, said in a statement cited by the AP agency that Zada’s decision to agree to her expulsion “should not be seen as an endorsement of the legitimacy of this court.” “Dragging legal permanent residents to a court but refusing to show them or their lawyers the evidence that will be used against them is a violation of due process. We trust that the Alien Terrorist Removal Court will be overturned as unconstitutional as soon as a judge is asked to take up this matter,” it added.
It is unclear whether the migrant’s defense separately challenged the constitutionality of the ATRC, created as a special court with five judges from federal district courts. But in the documents of this case, it claimed that its statute gives the Government too low a threshold to comply with due process. It also argued that Zada was illegally detained because, according to its interpretation of the law, proceedings in that Court can only be initiated by the head of the Department of Homeland Security and not by the Attorney General as happened here.
This Court was activated by the Administration amid Trump’s harsh immigration offensive. As part of a machinery of detentions and deportations of undocumented migrants, the Government also resorted in 2025 to an old wartime law, the so-called Foreign Enemies Act, to expel dozens of Venezuelan migrants whom it labeled without evidence as alleged terrorists. It sent them to the controversial Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador despite a judge prohibiting it and even requesting the return of the planes in the air. It was precisely that magistrate, James Boasberg, who reminded the Government at that time that expulsions could be reviewed by the Alien Terrorist Removal Court.
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