JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A new court launched in Washington this week 30 years after Congress created it. The court gives the government another way to deport people who pose a threat to national security. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Lawmakers created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court in 1996, but it had never been used by the Justice Department until this week.
SEAMUS HUGHES: I think the Department of Justice picked the strongest possible cases at first trial balloon.
JOHNSON: Seamus Hughes is a counter terrorism researcher at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He attended the first court hearing, what he calls a work in progress.
HUGHES: You saw the judge and the defense and Department of Justice even kind of thumbing through the statute language to make sure that what they were proposing was, you know, legally sound and acceptable and all those things.
JOHNSON: At the center of the case is Nazira Haji Zada. She's a 47-year-old woman originally from Afghanistan, now a legal permanent resident of the U.S. based in Texas. Last year, authorities obtained convictions against her son and son-in-law for plotting an attack on the 2024 elections. But rather than charge her with a crime, the Justice Department turned to the Alien Terrorist Removal Court. DOJ lawyers say she worked to radicalize her family to support the Islamic State terror group. But they offered few details because they worry about disclosing classified information and the sources and methods the U.S. government used to gather it. Georgetown University Law professor Steve Vladeck's closely following the new court.
STEVE VLADECK: This whole system, the entire premise of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court is a compromise where the government gets, you know, more favorable evidentiary rules and it gets the ability to use at least some classified information in exchange for having the ultimate arbiter be an Article 3 federal judge.
JOHNSON: Judge Joan Ericksen is in charge of the new court. She's a senior judge based in Minnesota with extensive experience in national security. Ericksen arrived at the courthouse in D.C. this week shortly before the hearing, her roller bag and her robe in hand. Ericksen's been demanding more information from the government to back up its claims, and she says she's working to make the new court more transparent to the public. Again, Steve Vladeck of Georgetown University.
VLADECK: And so far, you know, Chief Judge Ericksen, from what we know publicly, has not been in a hurry to accommodate the government's every request.
JOHNSON: Public defenders for Haji Zada signaled they'll challenge the constitutionality of the untested court, arguing she's getting, quote, "woefully inadequate" due process and that DOJ is using the new court as an end run around the regular justice system to avoid the high burden of proof to convict her of a crime. Terrorism researcher Seamus Hughes says the precedent for the Alien Terrorist Removal Court is developing in real time.
HUGHES: You know, the question of whether someone should be detained throughout the entire process is an open question right now. You know, the question of how much information the Department of Justice should have to be required to provide to the defense, whether that's classified or unclassified, is a relatively open question, if you look at the statute.
JOHNSON: Judge Ericksen has ordered Haji Zada to remain in custody for now in the D.C. jail. Both sides are due back in court August 11.
Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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