The Alien Terrorist Removal Court has scheduled a first-of-its-kind public hearing for next week to determine whether Afghan citizen Nazira Haji Zada should be detained while her deportation case is decided.
Ms. Zada, whom the government says was part of a 2024 ISIS-backed plot to attack election sites, is the first person ever to be charged in the 30-year history of the court.
The government is using the court because it wants to deport her, but doesn’t want to have to make public some of the classified information it says it has against her.
Judge Joan Erickson, the chief judge of the terrorism court, issued a brief order Wednesday setting the public hearing for Aug. 27. The terrorism court will borrow space from the regular federal district court in Washington.
She’d canceled a previous hearing after a flurry of briefs were filed just beforehand.
Prosecutors say Ms. Zada, 47, who resides in Fort Worth, Texas, assisted her son and son-in-law in their plans to conduct a mass shooting attack to disrupt the most recent presidential election.
The two men have pleaded guilty to planning the attack, which prosecutors say was connected to the Islamic State.
In filings made public earlier this week, federal prosecutors made their case for why Ms. Zada should be held in detention, rather than released into the community, while she awaits the outcome of her case.
Prosecutors portrayed Ms. Zada as being at the heart of ISIS indoctrination that spurred the young men’s plans.
That included pledging her own allegiance to ISIS, and pressuring most of her children to do so as well.
In a curious twist, authorities say she hid her activities from her husband, a long-haul trucker who was often away from their home.
Ms. Zada is an Afghan citizen who holds a green card, meaning she has permanent legal status. Under the rules governing the court, that entitles her to a hearing to challenge her detention.
Prosecutors said if she were being charged in regular immigration court she would be detained based on the alleged connections to terrorism. They argued the terrorism court should be no different.
“She should not be released for three reasons: one, to prevent future violent terrorist attacks; two, to prevent the indoctrination of her children, grandchildren and others into ISIS ideology; and three, to prevent her from fleeing,” prosecutors wrote in their filing.
They said Ms. Zada had made plans to sell the family home to finance the plot, which needed money to buy guns and ammunition. Ms. Zada also bought airplane tickets to spirit most of her family back to Afghanistan — though not her son and son-in-law, who planned to die as martyrs in the attack.
Her husband was also left out of the ticket purchase, prosecutors said.
Ms. Zada’s daughter told the FBI that the mother made all of her children except her two youngest sons pledge allegiance to ISIS and watch propaganda videos. When the daughter sought to stop following ISIS’s version of Islam, she said her mother punished her.
The daughter later recanted, but the FBI said that was coerced by her family.
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