The Justice Department awakened a terrorist deportation court this month to remove the mother of an Afghan teenager who was convicted of plotting an ISIS-inspired mass shooting on Election Day in 2024, according to newly released filings.
A public hearing Thursday morning will be the first for the “Alien Terrorist Removal Court,” an untested tribunal also handling its first case in its 30-year existence.
The Justice Department said Nazira Haji Zada, 47, from Fort Worth, Texas, was arrested earlier this week. She is accused of helping plot a planned attack that was to be carried out by her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, who was 17 at the time of his arrest in 2024, and her son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 28, a DOJ news release said.
Nazira Zada’s case, detailed in some documents posted on the court’s website late Wednesday, provides the first glimpse into a legal venue where prosecutors can rely on secret evidence — and an accused person does not have the otherwise fundamental right to challenge that it was illegally obtained.
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Those documents show that the legal proceeding relies largely on evidence the government has deemed classified, meaning that prosecutors are not willing to make public the materials it’s using to support its accusation.
An unclassified FBI summary of the evidence says Nazira Zada “worked to indoctrinate her children with ISIS ideology” and helped the attackers while keeping it all from her husband. A separate declaration by a high ranking Immigration and Customs Enforcement official says that the woman’s husband was employed from 2009 until 2016 at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, a main hub for the United States military during the 20-year war in the country.
That declaration also said Nazira Zada was admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 2018, as a derivative on her husband’s immigrant visa application.
The case is being overseen by U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen of Minnesota, who is currently serving as the Alien Terrorist Removal Court’s chief judge. The government’s attempt to move forward on the case earlier this month was slowed down, because Ericksen “had questions about the application and the evidence submitted to support it,” she wrote.
That supplement is also classified, and only the cover page was posted publicly.
The initial status hearing is set to begin at 11 a.m. Thursday at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.
DOJ had initially planned to arrest the woman, fly her to the nation’s capital, and present her in court “all within the same day,” according to a court filing. However, a department news release said “Zada was arrested earlier this week.”
That release called Nazira Zada “the matriarch of an alien Afghan family,” and said court documents in the criminal case say that the family, to raise funds for the attack, “started selling off their property, including furniture, computers, a mobile phone, and the family’s two vehicles.”
Government officials say the woman speaks Dari, understands little English and will need an interpreter in court.
“This is a historic step asking this court for the first time to remove an individual from the United States who supported a plot by ISIS-sympathizing family members to commit an act of terrorism in America,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a prepared statement. “No one should be allowed to come into our country and then betray it. The FBI and our Justice Department partners will not hesitate to use all available resources to protect the American people.”
The ATRC is a deportation proceeding that is civil, not criminal, in nature. It’s yet unclear what evidence the government has to accuse Nazira Zada of assisting her son and son-in-law. Her son, who faced terrorism charges, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to receiving a firearm and ammunition to commit a terrorist attack.
Tawhedi, who is also accused of terrorism, underwent a psychological evaluation and was subsequently committed “for an additional period of evaluation and treatment” as per a judge’s order.
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