Trump's DOJ turns to a never-used court for its next deportation fight

The Trump administration's Justice Department is deploying a federal court that hasn't heard a case in three decades. Axios reports the DOJ filed the first application ever in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, seeking to remove an unnamed noncitizen allegedly linked to terrorism. The court allows the government to keep evidence secret during removal proceedings—something ordinary immigration law doesn't permit. But the presiding judge already questioned whether the government's evidence actually fits the law, and demanded additional justification from the department. The same court sat idle for thirty years after Congress created it in nineteen ninety-six, and the DOJ's own history suggests why: it once considered a hundred possible cases and rejected them all.

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