Secret Immigration Court Existed 30 years Without a Case—Until Now.

The United States government has a special court devoted to removing alien terrorists from the country.

Almost no one knew it existed.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court sounds like something from a political thriller. In reality, it spent most of its life as one of the quietest corners of the federal government.

It has judges. It has rules, procedures, a clerk and an official government website.

What it did not have, for 30 years, was a case.

Not one.

Unbelievable, especially when you consider what happened during those 30 years.

The court was created in 1996. Five years later, terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. America spent the next two decades fighting terrorism around the world. We hunted al-Qaeda. We fought ISIS. We investigated terrorist cells, disrupted planned attacks and encountered foreign nationals believed to have ties to terrorist organizations.

Yet somehow, through all of it, the Alien Terrorist Removal Court sat empty.

Why?

Apparently, nobody could find anything for it to do.

That finally changed this month when the Justice Department submitted the first application in the court's history. That deserves some credit. Six administrations had access to this court. The Trump administration is the first one that actually decided to use it. An institution created during the Clinton administration has now received its first case during the second Trump administration.

Thirty years is a long time to wait for your first day at work.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court was created to solve a real problem. Sometimes the government believes a noncitizen is involved in terrorism, but the evidence comes from classified intelligence that cannot be revealed in ordinary immigration proceedings without exposing sources, methods or ongoing operations.

Congress created a special process.

The chief justice appoints five sitting federal district judges from different judicial circuits. They serve staggered terms and review government applications seeking to remove noncitizens accused of terrorism-related activity.

These aren't political appointees tucked away in some basement office at the Justice Department. They're sitting federal judges with lifetime appointments who already serve on the federal bench.

In other words, despite existing for three decades, the court hasn't been some expensive government boondoggle waiting for work.

Now it finally has something to do.

The first case remains largely secret. The person targeted by the government has not been publicly identified, and the application was filed under seal.

For now, though, the Alien Terrorist Removal Court is no longer a court without a case.

After 30 years of waiting, its judges have finally been asked to judge something.

The question going forward is whether Washington will remember why it built this court—or whether it will go right back to forgetting.