The Donald Trump administration has activated a court that had never before been used to quickly deport people deemed foreign terrorists and their immediate family members. On July 15 the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a request with the Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC), the first the court has received since it was created in 1996. There is no information available about whom the deportation request targets or what arguments the government made, because the content is being kept secret as the court’s rules require.
What has emerged is that the Department of Justice had to submit additional information to the court by this Wednesday, July 22, at the latest. The district judge who heads the court, Joan Ericksen, wrote that “questions were raised about the nexus the Government alleges exists between the defendant’s actions and the specific sections and subsections it invokes in relation to those actions.” She explained that “the answers persuaded the court that the Government could benefit from an opportunity to conduct further, more careful consideration.”
The decision to activate the court is shrouded in mystery. When it was created, it was stipulated that information would be kept secret on the grounds that it was a national security matter. “It requires a very particular and extremely grave case to justify resorting to this court. I suppose a factual situation so immensely serious and dangerous was presented that they felt forced to use it, because they had no other mechanism to expel that person from the United States without risking the disclosure of highly confidential information,” says Aram Gavoor, vice dean for academic affairs at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.
Congress created the ATRC in 1996 as a special court and authorized the chief justice of the Supreme Court to designate five judges from federal district courts to review requests to remove foreign terrorists from the country. Judges serve renewable five-year terms and must come from different judicial circuits.
The law empowers the attorney general to draft a removal request for an alleged foreign terrorist and to file it with the court in secret. A single judge can approve the request if they determine that the foreign national has been properly identified as a foreign terrorist and that removing them through other available legal mechanisms would pose a risk to national security. Not even the person affected knows they are the subject of the request until the judge approves the DOJ’s petition, at which point they are entitled to a public hearing to challenge the decision. Any appeal of the ruling must be filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which the DOJ can also turn to if its petition is rejected.
“All members of this court have previously served as judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court for periods of between two and four years, so they are accustomed to demanding rigor from the government, although not in foreign removal proceedings but when authorizing wiretaps,” Gavoor, who served as the DOJ’s national security legal adviser under several Democratic and Republican administrations, told EL PAÍS.
Record deportation orders
Bringing into operation a court that had never been activated comes at a time when the government is pressing new measures to increase deportations. According to figures first reported by The New York Times, the administration has set a goal of detaining 2,000 people a day to advance the historic deportation effort President Trump wants. On Tuesday, TRAC (the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which keeps an unofficial count of immigration enforcement activity) published that 100,773 removal cases were closed in June, a historic record driven largely by a 30% increase in removal orders issued by immigration judges.
During the early months of the second Trump administration roughly 50,000 orders were issued and that figure remained steady for a year. In March 2026 they rose to 60,000 and hovered around that level before jumping to nearly 79,000 in June, TRAC reports.
Although the ATRC has never operated, last year it was part of a ruling on the administration’s initial removal operations. The government revived a 1798 statute, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify the removal of 260 Salvadoran and Venezuelan migrants in March 2025 to El Salvador. The law had previously been used only in wartime situations, such as the two world wars. Those detained were denied due process and held at the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), known for systematic human rights abuses. The administration accused them of belonging to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which Trump labeled a terrorist organization. No evidence supporting that claim was presented. In some cases Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents justified alleged gang membership solely on the basis of the detainees’ tattoos.
District Judge James Boasberg, who unsuccessfully ordered the planes carrying the detainees to be returned, referred to the court the government is now activating when opposing the removals. “In fact, Congress has an answer for us, doesn’t it? Because it created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court,” he said. “They can always turn to the ATRC — which would be unprecedented — but that’s what it’s there for, right?”
The administration’s lawyer, Drew Ensign, responded at the time that the fact the administration could seek recourse to that court did not mean Trump was barred from using a different authority, such as the Alien Enemies Act, to expel people without a trial.
Uncertainty about the case that has activated the ATRC for the first time in history could remain hidden for more than a year. “We will never learn all the facts, because that court was designed precisely to operate in secret,” Gavoor says.
