Border Czar Says More Cases Will Head to Alien Terrorist Removal Court

White House border czar Tom Homan said the Trump administration will soon be bringing many more cases under the long-dormant Alien Terrorist Removal Act.

Homan made the comment to Epoch Times senior editor Jan Jekielek in an interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

The recently activated Alien Terrorist Removal Court is “a tool that we’re going to be using,” said the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“One of the greatest things President [Donald] Trump did was designate terrorist groups … criminal cartels, terrorists … MS-13, [Tren de Aragua], the drug cartels … that … brings the whole weight of the government on them,” Homan said.

Homan noted that at the Republican National Convention in July 2024, he said on stage that Trump was “going to designate those groups terrorist organizations.”

“He’s going to wipe them off the face of the earth. I think we’re working toward that,” he said.

Based in Washington, the Alien Terrorist Removal Court heard its first-ever case on July 30 after the Trump administration mobilized the obscure federal court earlier that month.

In 1996, Congress created the court, which is permitted to rely on classified evidence in deportation cases. Five U.S. district judges are authorized to review applications to remove alleged noncitizen terrorists from the United States.

Nazira Haji Zada was removed from the United States after the government alleged she supported and helped to conceal her role in planning an ISIS-inspired mass shooting that was supposed to take place on Election Day in 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Sept. 11. She is permanently barred from returning to the United States.

“This landmark case, resulting in the prompt removal of this alien terrorist to her country of origin, is a win for national security and the rule of law,” U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said at the time.

Haji Zada was not charged with a crime in the removal proceeding. Her attorneys argued that the Alien Terrorist Removal Court was a substitute for a criminal prosecution and that its use of classified evidence violated due process. U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen, the court’s chief judge, rejected their request to dismiss the case.

The DOJ alleged that Haji Zada, an Afghan national and lawful permanent resident of the United States, was an ISIS supporter who made her children pledge loyalty to the terrorist group.

The department says she supported and helped to conceal a plot by her relatives to execute a failed Election Day 2024 mass shooting attack in the United States. The site of the planned attack was not disclosed.

Blanche said 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.”

Troy Myers contributed to this report.