The Justice Department has filed the first petition ever received by the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, activating a dormant five-judge panel that Congress created 30 years ago and that had never been used until this past Wednesday.
The sealed application, brought against an individual whose name is withheld from the single-page docket entry posted on the court's website, opens a new legal channel for the Trump administration's deportation drive. It routes a national-security removal request away from the immigration courts and the federal district courts that have handled the administration's most contested removals to date, and puts it before a panel whose judges are selected by Chief Justice John Roberts.
The Thursday hearing
Chief Judge Joan Ericksen, a federal judge in Minnesota, held a hearing Thursday and directed the Justice Department to provide additional information by Wednesday, according to a written response posted on the court's docket. Ericksen wrote that the court had "questions about the nexus that the government alleges between the actions of the respondent and the specific sections and subsections it invokes with respect to those actions."
"The answers persuaded the Court that the Government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration," Ericksen wrote.
The 1996 law
The court draws its authority from the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which permits the attorney general or the deputy attorney general to file sealed applications for the deportation of a suspected "alien terrorist." Federal law defines that category to include a person who has "engaged in a terrorist activity," who endorses or espouses terrorist activities, or who belongs to a political or social group that encourages terrorist activity. If the court grants an application, the government must then prove its case at a public hearing.
The five judges on the panel are selected by the chief justice. According to a summary posted on the Federal Judicial Center website, the court had received no applications and held no hearings between its creation and last week. The petition was first reported by Court Watch, an independent news site.
A forum flagged earlier
The Alien Terrorist Removal Court had already surfaced in another Trump-era deportation fight. Judge James Boasberg, the Washington federal judge overseeing the administration's use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelan migrants that officials accuse of gang ties, pointed to the panel from the bench last year as the appropriate forum for national-security removals.
"In fact, Congress has an answer for us, doesn't it? Because they created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court," Boasberg said. "So if there's a national security concern with having these hearings...you can always go to the ATRC, which would be a first, but that's what it's there for, right?"
Wednesday's filing takes Boasberg's suggestion and makes it operational, for the first time in the statute's 30-year life.
Not on the record
The individual named in the sealed application has not been publicly identified, and the single-page docket entry does not disclose the alleged conduct at issue. The Associated Press account distributed by PBS NewsHour and the version posted by CNBC did not include comment from the Justice Department, from counsel for the respondent, or from members of Congress with oversight of the department. Under the 1996 statute, the proceedings remain sealed unless and until the court grants the application and moves to a public hearing.
What comes next
Ericksen's Thursday order sets the Justice Department's next filing for Wednesday. Whether the court grants the application will determine whether the Alien Terrorist Removal Court holds its first-ever public deportation hearing, the step that under the 1996 law would place the burden on the government to prove that the individual meets the federal definition of an alien terrorist.