This court was created 30 years ago and never heard a case. Trump wants to change that

A little-known court tasked with handling highly sensitive deportation cases against alleged alien terrorists has been dormant since its founding in 1996, without even a website to track the proceedings before it.

But this month, the Alien Terrorist Deportation Tribunal came back to life The Trump administration is facing a first-of-its-kind lawsuit as it turns to new deportation tactics.

For 30 years, rotating judges assigned to the court have stood ready to hear any case that comes before them. But never before has the federal government thought it had a case that required litigation or that it was worth the risk of testing the constitutionality of its controversial procedures.

The court gives the government enormous latitude to keep secret its reasons for believing an immigrant is a terrorist (including the person it is trying to deport). And it closes off many of the avenues immigrants typically have to appeal their deportation.

Because, by design, much of what happens in court is kept secret, little is known about the groundbreaking lawsuit the Justice Department filed in court this month. But what is publicly available is an order from the ATRC judge who oversaw it stating that he was not persuaded by the government’s initial arguments and that additional information must be submitted this week.

Here’s what you need to know about the secret court and the new questions its use will raise.

Ministry of Justice has so far avoided litigation

Since Congress established the court in a sweeping bill called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, questions have persisted about whether the court’s procedures are constitutional; This may explain why previous administrations avoided bringing cases before the courts.

Lawmakers established the court’s secret procedures as a way to protect state secrets that the Justice Department has determined would pose a national security risk if disclosed in open court.

According to the statute, alleged “foreign terrorists” are: a term defined in law – Very limited information is given about the evidence the government gathered to justify their rapid deportation. But these restrictions also brought accusations that the court violated the due process protections that the Fifth Amendment applies not only to citizens but also to legal and even illegal immigrants within U.S. borders.

“The ATRC was definitely the last court of choice,” said Andrew Arthur, who oversaw terrorism cases as chief prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Immigration and Naturalization Service in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

During his tenure at the agency (which was dissolved with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security), the government determined that traditional immigration proceedings provided sufficient protection for classified information in national security-related cases. Additionally, Arthur noted that the use of the ATRC was bound to lead to legal challenges that would force the Supreme Court to weigh in.

It’s not entirely clear why the calculus changed, but the Trump administration has shown itself to be much more risk tolerant in pushing the regulatory framework.

Arthur, who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for tougher immigration laws, speculated that the case could involve a person who “concludes that the government has done something very bad, but the worst thing the person has done is not something they can say in open court.”

“Alternatively, it’s because they want to set up the ATRC as a separate, slightly faster tribunal,” he said.

Unlike the administration’s other flashy immigration moves, the Justice Department filed the new case quietly and in sealed filings. First reported by Court Watch.

“This Department of Justice will use every tool available, including this court established by Congress in 1996, to bring alien terrorists to justice and remove them from the United States,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. he said.

“Velociraptors are testing the fences,” said CNN legal analyst Steve Vladeck, who likened the Trump administration’s court filing to the movie “Jurassic Park.”

“If they lose this case, he’ll probably be the only person who can initiate normal deportation proceedings,” Vladeck said. “If they win, think about the precedent that would set.”

An accelerated process

Various aspects of the court theoretically make deporting individuals a faster process, one in which individuals are denied many of the typical mechanisms used to challenge their deportation.

The law requires that the trial take place “as expeditiously as practicable.” This law prohibits asylum claims and other arguments that individuals may make to block deportation under standard immigration law.

The appeal process is also faster. Any appeal must be filed with the DC U.S. District Court of Appeals within 20 days of the decision. Appeals of decisions in regular immigration cases are much slower and go through several other stages before reaching the federal appeals court.

But on the other hand, legal experts say this is not a tool the administration can use to deport large numbers of immigrants. The five judges who serve on the ATRC come from the Article III judicial branch, making them more independent arbiters than the executive branch immigration judges who often preside over deportation proceedings.

Vladeck, the Georgetown Law professor, said that when the alleged alien terrorist is given very little work time to challenge the Justice Department’s arguments, the law essentially “passes the responsibility for that to the judge.” pre-written about the court. “The whole process has always been designed to make judges extra skeptical, but I think the events of the last 18 months will make it even more likely that judges will be skeptical.”

J. Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who handles immigration and national security cases, said that given the court’s operation, “it really doesn’t make sense for the administration to try to use this court for mass deportation.”

Constitutional questions regarding procedures

Observers think it will take some time to determine whether this quick process is constitutional. Although the court remained unused for decades after its creation, legal experts have long debated whether it gave immigrants adequate notice of the case and the opportunity to respond.

“Are we really going to say they can be deported based on evidence they’ve never seen?” said Vladeck.

Once the government determines that using normal deportation procedures would pose a national security risk, it may file a motion authorizing the court to present the bulk of the case secretly and ex parte; This means that only the judge sees all the evidence and the information is kept from the targeted person.

“Throughout the ATRC’s statutory framework, Congress’s intent for the court is clear: to provide a forum in which the U.S. attorney general can deport resident aliens who are presumably terrorists without the attorney general having to sacrifice any state secrets in doing so.” 2011 Duke law John Dorsett Niles’ review noted:

Once the initial application is approved by the judge, the law requires a public hearing and establishes procedures for the alleged alien to have legal representation; However, there are also confidentiality provisions that restrict the defense that lawyers can make.

Legal permanent residents have the most rights under court procedures. While they do not have the right to personally review the government’s evidence, the law requires the appointment of a special attorney who can access this confidential evidence and challenge it on the immigrant’s behalf. However, the private lawyer cannot share the details of the evidence with his client, which hinders the provision of defense.

Those with weaker ties to the United States (illegal immigrants or documented immigrants with temporary status) may be presented with highly generalized summaries of the government’s evidence. But the government does not always have to provide even this generalized summary.

In addition to the due process questions the procedures raise, Dixon said, there are elements of the law creating the court that create tension with the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions on unlawful searches.

For example, the law says that an alleged terrorist cannot seek the suppression of evidence against him or her that was illegally obtained by the government.

“When Congress creates new courts aimed at depriving people of the benefits of regular Article III courts, the only guaranteed outcome is years of additional litigation,” Dixon said.

Early skepticism about Trump case

According to the Federal Judicial Center’s statement, Trump made his application in July. web page describing the court. Besides the cover page of the Justice Department application, the only public file in the case is July 16 order From Judge Joan Ericksen, Chief Judge of the ATRC since 2025, who presided over the new case. It says he had a hearing ahead of him that day.

Justices serve staggered 5-year terms on the court and are appointed to the Court by Chief Justice John Roberts. The law requires each to come from different districts, namely the districts covered by each federal appeals court. Roberts did not respond to CNN’s inquiry to the Supreme Court about other criteria he considers in appointments.

Ericksen is a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, which was ground zero for judicial tensions with the executive branch during a escalation of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis earlier this year.

The ATRC will be seated in the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., which is home to the federal district and appellate courts as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, but court officials could not provide details about the July 16 hearing.

Ericksen’s order implies there are holes in the government’s case and vaguely refers to questions about how the individual’s alleged actions relate to the laws the government invokes.

He gave the administration until Wednesday to provide additional information and said he believed “the government could take advantage of the opportunity for more careful consideration.”

As of Thursday morning, the application was not available on the public website.

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