Trump Activates Never-Used Deportation Court

Trump Activates Never-Used Deportation Court

For thirty years, Congress gave the executive branch a purpose-built tool to remove foreign terrorists from American soil. For thirty years, every administration left it on the shelf. The Trump administration just picked it up.

The Justice Department filed the sealed application with the Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC) on July 15. The accompanying cover sheet indicates that the underlying material is classified, leaving the identity of the person targeted by the government and the allegations against that person undisclosed.

Congress created the court through the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, a law passed with broad bipartisan support in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and the first World Trade Center attack. No administration, Republican or Democrat, had ever used it. Until now.

Chief Judge Joan Ericksen held a sealed hearing with the government one day after the application was filed. Ericksen, a George W. Bush appointee, then directed the Justice Department to submit additional information by July 22.

“The government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration,” Ericksen wrote.

The judge said she still had questions about the actions attributed to the unnamed target and how those actions fit the federal definition of an “alien terrorist.” That is a legitimate statutory question, and notably, it is the kind of question a court is supposed to answer. The administration came to the right venue; it may simply need to make a cleaner case.

The five-member court exists specifically to review applications seeking the removal of suspected foreign terrorists. Its judges are selected from different federal circuits by the chief justice of the United States and serve staggered five-year terms.

Under the 1996 law, the attorney general may submit a removal application under seal when other available methods of deportation could endanger national security. The government must provide facts supporting the designation and certify that the person’s presence threatens national security.

A judge may approve the application after finding that the government has correctly identified the person and that ordinary removal proceedings would pose a national security risk. Approval would lead to a public hearing, during which the accused may have an attorney and challenge the government’s case.

“To avoid the disclosure of classified information, the government must prepare an unclassified summary of such information which the judge must find to be sufficient for the alien to prepare a defense.”

The law covers members of designated terrorist organizations, people who endorse or espouse terrorist activity, and certain spouses or children of those designated as alien terrorists. It also permits the Secretary of State to designate someone who intends to participate in activities that could endanger the United States.

An appeal would go directly to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The administration’s use of the dormant court follows a bruising legal fight over President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) against alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the administration designated a terrorist organization. That effort ran into a wall of judicial resistance, much of it from the administration’s own appointees.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg pointed to the Alien Terrorist Removal Court during proceedings over the administration’s attempt to deport more than 100 Venezuelans linked to the gang.

“In fact, Congress has an answer for us, doesn’t it? Because they created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court,” Boasberg said. “You can always go to the ATRC, which would be a first, but that’s what it’s there for, right?”

The administration argued that the court’s existence did not prevent Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime statute enacted in 1798, and that the president retains broad authority over national security deportations regardless of what other mechanisms Congress has created. That argument had legal merit. It also kept losing.

That approach encountered resistance in several federal courts. U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a Trump appointee, ruled in May 2025 that the administration could not use the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelans from the Southern District of Texas. Rodriguez found that gang activity did not satisfy the statute’s original meaning of an “invasion” or “predatory incursion,” terms historically reserved for organized military force. His ruling is limited to one district and subject to appeal, but the pattern was clear: the AEA path was increasingly a dead end.

So the administration has done what Judge Boasberg suggested from the bench months ago: it went to the court Congress actually built for this purpose. Critics who spent the past year insisting the president was lawlessly bypassing judicial oversight are now watching him use a judicial process they never expected him to touch. The ATRC has due process protections, a statutory framework, and an Article III judge asking hard questions. That is how this is supposed to work. For the first time in thirty years, the court has an actual case, and the administration’s legal footing is considerably firmer as a result.

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