In 1996, Congress created a five-member court specifically designed to fast-track the removal of alien terrorists from the United States. It was called the Alien Terrorist Removal Court. It had judges. It had authority. It had a website.
Nobody ever filed a single case. Not Bush. Not Obama. Not Biden. Not even Clinton, who created the court in response to the Oklahoma City bombing attack.
Thirty years. Five judges appointed by successive Chief Justices. A court established under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, sitting there like a loaded weapon in a locked cabinet while administrations from both parties processed dangerous aliens through the same sluggish immigration system everyone else uses.
That changed last Wednesday when the Trump Justice Department filed the first-ever petition to the court. The single-page document — posted on the court's website — named an unnamed respondent and formally activated the legal mechanism not touched since its inception.
Chief Judge Joan Ericksen, a federal judge in Minnesota, held a hearing Thursday. She noted "questions about the nexus that the government alleges between the actions of the respondent and the specific sections" of the statute, and gave the government until Wednesday to provide additional information. "The answers persuaded the Court that the Government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration," she said.
The court's five judges were selected by Chief Justice John Roberts, and the proceedings operate under different rules than standard immigration court. This isn't an overworked judge in a backlogged system trying to get through a stack of asylum claims. This is a court built specifically to remove people the government identifies as terrorist threats.
Washington Judge James Boasberg — who has tangled with the administration over the use of the Alien Enemies Act for Venezuelan deportations — actually pointed to this court as the proper channel. "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."
Critics will argue the administration is weaponizing an obscure statute. But there's nothing obscure about it. Congress wrote the law. Congress funded the court. Congress intended it to be used. The fact that nobody bothered for three decades says more about previous administrations than it does about this one.
The respondent's name was withheld from the public filing, which is standard procedure for national security cases under the statute. That's the point of the court — it was designed to handle sensitive removal proceedings that don't belong in open immigration hearings.
Every tool the government needs to enforce immigration law already exists. Most of them have just been sitting in a drawer. This administration opened the drawer.