Trump Administration Opens Secret Court To Restore Transparency
The Trump administration restored transparency to American justice Wednesday by filing the first case in a secret federal court against an unnamed person using undisclosed evidence, ending three decades of reckless public accountability. Congress created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court in 1996, but previous presidents apparently lacked Donald Trump’s resolve to locate an unused tribunal in Washington’s legal storage closet. The Justice Department now seeks to deport a noncitizen whose identity remains sealed, protecting Americans from potentially dangerous information such as who the person is, what the government alleges and whether any of it is true.
Trump hailed the proceeding as a breakthrough in open government. “This is the most transparent secret court anybody has ever seen, because nobody can leak the facts when nobody is allowed to know the facts,” he said. “You don’t know the name, you don’t see the evidence, and that means there is absolutely nothing being hidden from you that you can identify.” Judge Joan Ericksen, who presides over the court, ordered the Justice Department to submit additional facts and legal analysis, invoking the obscure judicial custom of asking the government to explain what it is doing before granting permission to do it.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s revival of the dormant tribunal gives Americans a streamlined definition of due process: The government privately labels someone an alien terrorist, confidentially describes its reasoning and publicly announces that all necessary safeguards were observed by the people who designed them. Critics have argued that courts should test accusations rather than provide federally furnished confirmation rooms, but administration officials noted that ordinary immigration proceedings contain procedural hazards including lawyers, visible evidence and enough time to respond. The court’s activation also marks another Trump achievement: rescuing a Clinton-era institution from irrelevance by embracing the constitutional concerns that kept every prior administration from using it. Secrecy is now the highest form of transparency.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.