DOJ tests dormant terror deportation court in Afghan woman case

The Justice Department has opened the first real test of a secret federal tribunal Congress created nearly 30 years ago to remove noncitizens it labels terrorists. Prosecutors are using the Alien Terrorist Removal Court to seek deportation of an Afghan woman they describe as an "alien terrorist," a filing that turns a long-dormant statutory mechanism into an active case.

The woman is described in reporting as an Afghan mother of a convicted terrorist and is accused of supporting an Islamic State-inspired plot in the United States. The proceeding is unfolding before a court designed for terrorism-removal requests outside ordinary immigration channels, under procedures in Title 8 of the U.S. Code. Unlike standard deportation cases, this forum was built to let the government pursue removal through a separate, secretive process.

Congress created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court in 1996 and modeled it on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It is a real statutory federal court, and the Federal Judicial Center maintains history and judges pages for it, but the tribunal had remained dormant for 30 years and had never received a petition before this case. That makes the filing the first known attempt to use the court for the purpose Congress envisioned.

CNN reported on July 29, 2026, that the woman’s case was the first hearing before the never-before-used court. El País reported that the presiding judge gave the Justice Department until Wednesday to submit further arguments, showing the matter is already moving through a process with no prior courtroom track record. That lack of precedent is central to the legal scrutiny now surrounding the case.

Civil-liberties concerns are immediate because the tribunal was built for secretive terrorism-removal proceedings, not for the ordinary public testing of evidence that accompanies most immigration fights. The government’s choice of this forum signals a bid to use a rarely invoked legal tool against a defendant it wants treated as a national security case, not just a removal case. In practice, that puts the court’s secrecy and lack of past use at the center of the due-process debate before any final ruling has been issued.