America's Secret Deportation Court Has Now Been Used

The United States has crossed a legal threshold that had stood unopened for three decades. The Justice Department says it used the Alien Terrorist Removal Court for the first time to remove Nazira Haji Zada, an Afghan national accused of supporting a family plot for an ISIS-inspired mass shooting around the 2024 election.

The court was created by Congress in 1996 for cases in which ordinary immigration proceedings might expose national-security information. The Justice Department's first-case filing says the court can act when the government proves by a preponderance of the evidence that a person is an alien terrorist, and it can consider classified material. CNN reported that Haji Zada was deported after conceding the designation and choosing not to appeal a removal order signed by the court's chief judge.

That is a serious tool, and the facts alleged are serious. It is also a tool whose first use ended without a full adversarial test of the court's constitutionality or the government's evidence. A lawful permanent resident has been removed through a procedure designed to protect secrets that the respondent may not be able to see. National security can justify withholding details; it cannot justify withholding the standards by which power is judged.

The court should therefore publish every non-classified order, explain what legal test was applied and identify what evidence could be disclosed without compromising an operation. Congress should require an independent annual report on the use of classified evidence, access to counsel and appellate outcomes. Judges should be able to reject a government application when secrecy makes a meaningful defence impossible, rather than treating the lower civil standard as a shortcut around ordinary process.

The first removal proves that the court is no longer theoretical. It does not prove that its procedures are sound. The administration may have stopped a genuine security risk; the public still needs enough law, reasoning and review to know whether the same power can be used carefully the next time.