USA23 July, 20263 min read
Justice Department Activates Alien Terrorist Removal Court, Seeks Deportation in Minnesota Case
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The court had lain dormant since 1996 and had never heard a case before. The Justice Department moved to activate the court, initiating its first-ever deportation case.
ATRC revived for first case
The Justice Department activated the Alien Terrorist Removal Court for the first time in its 30-year existence, filing its first application last week to seek deportation of a person in a case that remains shrouded in mystery because the public cover page does not name the respondent or explain why.
Prosecutors with the National Security Division presented the case directly to Judge Joan Ericksen, a U.S. District judge in Minnesota who also serves as the ATRC’s chief judge, and Ericksen responded with a follow-up order demanding more information after the court questioned the “nexus” between the respondent’s actions and the specific statutory sections invoked.
The July 15 application’s only public part is a cover page referencing the classified nature of the case, and prosecutors presented their arguments behind closed doors on July 16 before Ericksen set a deadline for additional “factual or legal analysis to satisfy its statutory obligations.”
The court was created by the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and the CNN report says it had lacked even a website to track proceedings before this month’s unprecedented case.
Alfred Wolin, 93, a retired federal judge who served on the ATRC for eight years and is the only jurist still alive of the five initially assigned in 1996, said he was told the special tribunal never got any cases because “the FBI blocked any cases being sent to us.”
Judge presses for more
Ericksen’s order, described by EL PAÍS, set a deadline for the Department of Justice to provide more arguments, and the Spanish outlet said the judge wrote that questions were raised about the nexus the government asserts between the defendant’s actions and the specific sections and subsections it cites. EL PAÍS also reported that there is no information available about who the petition was filed against or what arguments the government provided because the contents are kept secret under the court’s regulations, with the person affected not learning they are the subject of the petition until the judge approves it.
CNN quoted Andrew Arthur saying, “The ATRC was the absolute last court of choice,” and the Center for Immigration Studies researcher argued that once the ATRC is used, legal challenges would force the Supreme Court to weigh in. CNN also quoted DOJ’s spokesperson saying, “This Department of Justice will use every tool available to bring alien terrorists to justice and remove them from the United States, including this court established by Congress in 1996,” while legal analyst Steve Vladeck compared the government’s move to “the velociraptors are testing the fences.”
What’s at stake next
The stakes in the ATRC case are tied to the court’s secretive procedures, which CNN says give the government “enormous latitude to keep secret – including from the person it is trying to deport – its reasons for believing an immigrant is a terrorist.”
CNN further says the law requires proceedings happen as “expeditiously as practicable,” forecloses raising asylum claims and other arguments available under standard immigration law, and accelerates appeals by requiring any appeal be filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals within 20 days.
The Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew R. Arthur framed the court’s activation as part of a broader immigration enforcement problem, writing that “The removal of alien terrorists from the United States, and the prevention of alien terrorists from entering the U.S. in the first place” are among the most intractable problems of immigration enforcement.
Arthur also emphasized that the ATRC’s procedures are designed to permit classified information, quoting the AEDPA conference report that the goal is “to permit the use of classified information in appropriate cases to establish the deportability of an alien terrorist.”
In the background of this first ATRC case, EL PAÍS reported that the Trump administration revived a rule from 1798, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify the deportation of 260 Salvadoran and Venezuelan migrants in March 2025 to El Salvador, and said the detainees did not receive due process and were imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot).