Trump Admin Seeks To Utilize 'Alien Terrorist Removal Court'

LISTEN LIVE. LIKE US ON FACEBOOK. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER. 

The U.S. Department of Justice, which has been subservient to President Donald Trump and his largely self-serving MAGA agenda since the start of his second term, has found a new way of getting around due process and public transparency regarding the administration’s mass deportation efforts: the Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC).

Oh, have you never heard of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court? Well, don’t feel bad. You shouldn’t be expected to be familiar with ATRC, since the court has not been utilized a single time since it was created in 1996.

From Bloomberg Law:

Congress created the ATRC to handle individual deportation hearings involving suspected terrorists based on highly sensitive information that would threaten national security if released.

Past administrations have avoided mobilizing the court, in part due the availability of other legal avenues for a suspected terrorist’s detainment and continued supervision, said former national security officials at DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security. Other obstacles are the court’s strict standard for using classified information and concerns that individuals can be deported without viewing the government’s evidence against them.

“This is essentially stepping into a car that has never run since it was released from the factory legislatively,” said Aram Gavoor, senior counsel for national security at DOJ during Trump’s first term and the start of Joe Biden’s administration.

“Because it’s a series of firsts, naturally the court is going to want to get it right,” Gavoor said.

So, why has Trump’s thoroughly MAGA-fied DOJ filed this petition seeking to activate this court that has been dormant for three decades now? Well, nobody seems to know, which is probably the point.

In fact, PBS News reported earlier this week that the DOJ is seeking the removal of an individual whose name is withheld from the single-page document filed with the court, and Joan Ericksen, the chief judge of the five-member court, said in a written response to the petition that a hearing was held on Thursday during which the court had “questions about the nexus that the government alleges between the actions of the respondent and the specific sections and subsections it invokes with respect to those actions.”

“The answers persuaded the Court that the Government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration,” Ericksen said.

In other words: federal judges are, once again, asking the Trump administration to prove its case regarding an immigrant it has deemed a “terrorist,” and the Trump administration has, as usual, been unable to do so.

Last year, the Trump administration made it clear that it either doesn’t care or doesn’t know what habeas corpus is when it tried to deport Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in March of that year because, according to the White House, Khalil is a “Hamas supporter” who organized an “unauthorized marching event,” and made social media posts in support of Palestine. Khalil, at the time, wasn’t formally charged with a crime, because, you know, none of that is actually illegal.

Here’s what I wrote about that previously:

Even the memo written by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that supposedly outlined the administration’s evidence appeared to note that nothing Khalil did broke any laws.

“For cases in which the basis for this determination is the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful, the Secretary of State must personally determine that the alien’s presence or activities would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest,” Rubio wrote.

According to CNN, Rubio was citing an obscure provision from the Immigration and Nationality Act  that grants the Secretary of State broad authority to revoke a documented migrant’s immigration status if their ‘activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.’”

At the end of the day, the Trump administration arrested Mahmoud Khalil for engaging in what Trump vaguely declared to be “illegal protests,” which don’t appear to be limited only to protests that turned violent, but extend to generally any cause he disagrees with.

The Trump administration employed similar tactics when it came to the effort to deport, defame and dehumanize Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant, who was mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador last year, and whom the administration fought tirelessly and unsuccessfully to keep out of the country by falsely smearing him as an MS-13 member without substantiating the allegation with unambiguous evidence that wasn’t taken out of context or outright photoshopped.

This is the last administration that should be trusted with using this court that no other administration has used in order to brand an immigrant as a terrorist so it can deport them without due process, and do so away from the public eye.

SEE ALSO:

Trump Wants Court To Force E. Jean Carroll To Return $5.6M He Paid Her For Sexual Assault Judgment

White House Teleprompter Operator Placed Bets On Trump Speeches

Trump Admin Seeks To Utilize 'Alien Terrorist Removal Court' That Hasn't Been Active Since It Was Created In 1996 was originally published on newsone.com