Nazira Haji Zada will have to continue waiting in custody for at least much of this month as the Trump administration tries to make her the first person deported though a newly activated secret court.
The Alien Terrorist Removal Court on Monday postponed a hearing that is meant to determine whether Haji Zada, an Afghan woman who was arrested by the FBI last month, may be released as the case moves forward.
U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen of Minnesota, who is overseeing the case in the untested court, scrapped plans to hold a hearing on Tuesday after defense lawyers told her they could not fairly argue for Haji Zada’s release if the government keeps withholding the evidence it claims to have against her.
The case raises novel constitutional questions, because the Justice Department is making accusations while claiming that the proof is classified and cannot be made public. The Justice Department activated the terrorist deportation court for the first time in the court’s 30-year existence.
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Federal defenders Mary Petras and Matthew Farley wrote in a filing Friday that the government told them it would not turn over classified evidence without an order from the court. The government’s hard-line stance was forcing them to walk into Tuesday’s hearing “completely blind … without having had any opportunity to review or challenge the evidence that is being presented in favor of her continued detention.”
They called it a “blatant violation” of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment for Haji Zada, who had been in the United States as a legal permanent resident, and a violation of the law that created the ATRC.
In response, Ericksen ordered the Justice Department to detail “all unclassified facts” the government is using to justify her ongoing detention with an eye toward public disclosure — but also to separately catalog each item it considers classified evidence and why disclosing it to defense attorneys would be a national security risk.
Ericksen gave the DOJ until Friday to comply with her order, and she gave defense lawyers another week to respond — all but ensuring that Haji Zada remains behind bars through most of August.
Haji Zada is currently listed as “Inmate 400151” at a D.C. jail. The D.C. Department of Corrections does not allow her to have any visitations, according to its online portal.
Court filings from her defense lawyers say she was arrested by FBI agents who showed up at her Fort Worth, Texas, home before dawn on July 28, and she was then forced onto a plane to the nation’s capital.
Her defense lawyers say she spent another two nights “without access to her family or legal counsel” in the D.C. jail’s notorious Central Cell Block — a temporary jail at Metropolitan Police Department headquarters which has been criticized for poor conditions and described by another local defense lawyer as a “living hellhole.”
A DOJ press release last week said Haji Zada was “being removed for her role in a plot to commit an ISIS-inspired mass shooting on Election Day in 2024.” Her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, is serving a 15-year sentence at a federal prison in Southern California after pleading guilty of receiving a firearm to commit terrorism.
Her son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, has also pleaded guilty but was judicially ordered to receive mental treatment after a psychological evaluation. However, she was never criminally charged in those cases.
Instead, the DOJ elected to put Nazira Haji Zada through what is essentially a civil deportation proceeding — except one led by criminal prosecutors at the department’s National Security Division.
A prepared statement by Attorney General Todd Blanche said “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.” An unclassified FBI summary claims that Nazira Haji Zada and Tawhedi “worked to indoctrinate her children with ISIS ideology and have them pledge loyalty to ISIS.”
The DOJ press release claimed that Nazira Haji Zada “signed a contract to sell the family house” — a reference to the previous allegation against her son and son-in-law that they had planned to use the funds to buy AK-47s to conduct some sort of attack.
However, in that criminal case, defense attorneys argued that the FBI accusation on the sale of the house is based on telegram conversations between Tawhedi and an alleged ISIS recruiter, and Tawhedi later admitted the statements were false during an FBI interview.
Property records show that the house was ultimately not sold and still belongs to the family.
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