Attorney General Todd Blanche held the news for seventeen days. His department deported an Afghan woman with a green card through a terrorism court no attorney general had used in thirty years, on Tuesday 25 August. He announced it on Friday 11 September, the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
Nazira Haji Zada, 47, lived in the Dallas–Fort Worth area as a lawful permanent resident. Nobody ever charged her with a crime. Her son and her son-in-law pleaded guilty to plotting an ISIS-inspired shooting on Election Day 2024; the son-in-law awaits sentencing. The Justice Department alleges she “indoctrinated” the family with ISIS ideology and supported the plot. She did not speak English and could not read or write, according to court filings reported by CNN.
Blanche called it “this landmark case, resulting in the prompt removal of this alien terrorist” in the department’s release, and FBI Director Kash Patel called it a “historic and vitally important step.” Neither man said the removal was two and a half weeks old. Trump set the frame in his Wednesday 9 September proclamation: “We must protect our treasured way of life against all those who seek our destruction — whether they threaten us from foreign lands or from among us within our borders.”
Below: the dates on the unsealed docket, what the 1996 statute lets prosecutors do with evidence, and what Blanche promised on Fox.
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