The Trump Justice Department has notched a historic national security win, securing the removal of an Afghan woman tied to a foiled ISIS-inspired plot to attack American voters on Election Day 2024 — the first person ever deported under a decades-old court that had sat unused since Congress created it.
Nazira Haji Zada, 47, an Afghan national who had been living in Fort Worth, Texas, was sent back to her home country after conceding in court that she is an “alien terrorist,” the Department of Justice announced. The case marked the first-ever use of the United States Alien Terrorist Removal Court, or ATRC, which Congress established in 1996 but which no previous administration had ever activated.
According to the Justice Department, Zada served as the matriarch of a family accused of supporting an ISIS-inspired mass shooting plot targeting Election Day 2024. Her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, were both arrested and convicted in connection with the scheme. The pair were taken into custody on Oct. 7, 2024, after purchasing firearms and ammunition from an undercover FBI employee to carry out the planned attack. Abdullah, who was 17 at the time of his arrest, was sentenced as an adult to 15 years in prison, while Tawhedi pleaded guilty to terrorism-related offenses.
The ATRC issued its removal order against Zada on Aug. 20, which was unsealed following her return to Afghanistan. The application to remove her, certified by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, was filed on July 15, and Zada made her first open-court appearance on July 30, presided over by ATRC Chief Judge Joan N. Ericksen. In compliance with the statute governing the court, the government relied on classified information to establish that Zada was an alien terrorist, while providing her legal team — two federal public defenders — with roughly half a terabyte of supporting documents.
Ultimately, Zada and her attorneys conceded she was an alien terrorist and waived her right to appeal the removal order, ending the legal fight before it could test the court’s unusual, secretive procedures. She is now permanently barred from returning to the United States.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg did not mince words in describing the case. “Zada supported her sons’ terrorist plot to attack the United States while she enjoyed the privilege of residing here as a resident alien,” Eisenberg said. “She abused our Nation’s hospitality and represented a clear threat to our national security. The United States is a safer place now that her sons are in custody and she has been deported.”
Blanche struck a similar tone ahead of the case’s initial hearing, framing the matter as emblematic of the threat posed by ISIS sympathizers embedded in American communities. “The allegations in this case show the matriarch of an ISIS-sympathizing family aiding in a plot to launch a mass-casualty attack on American voters on Election Day,” he said.
Public defenders representing Zada had earlier argued the secretive nature of the ATRC — which bars targets from reviewing classified evidence against them or challenging how it was collected — violated her due process rights. That legal battle will now go unresolved, as the administration notches its first win using a national security tool that sat dormant for 30 years.
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