Judge orders bond hearing for CT teen detained by ICE
Rihan, an 18-year-old Cheshire High School senior, could be released if an immigration judge grants him bond. Meantime, newly unsealed court documents are revealing new details about his arrest.
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A high school student from Cheshire could be released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody soon.
On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to schedule a bond hearing by next Monday.
It comes two days after DHS said it would keep the student detained – despite basing his arrest on erroneous paperwork – and a judge's order to present "potential options for Petitioner's pretrial release."
ICE ARRESTED TEEN
Immigration agents arrested 18-year-old Rihan last Monday as he left his house with an uncle and his brother. News 12 Connecticut is not revealing the teen's last name due to safety threats against his family overseas.
The high school senior has spent the last nine days at an ICE detention center in Massachusetts.
"This young man should be back in Cheshire finishing up his senior year in high school, Cheshire High School, just like every other good kid," said Gov. Ned Lamont. "A-student, wants to be a cardiologist. His dad was an interpreter standing alongside our soldiers in Afghanistan."
Rihan came to the U.S. legally in 2024 under humanitarian parole, a temporary immigration status for "urgent humanitarian reasons," because his father's work with the U.S. Army placed the family in danger.
"LOOKING FOR HIS FATHER"
Rihan's father, Zia, was the intended target, according to the teen's attorneys. ICE held Zia for three months before a judge ordered his release last October.
"The agents stated that they were looking for his father … with the intent to detain him," the student's attorneys said in a newly unsealed court filing.
When Rihan told officers that his father was at home, their attention allegedly turned to him.
"After checking their system, the officers claimed that his parole had expired," according to the filing.
But "their system" turned out to be wrong.
Agents based Rihan's arrest on erroneous online immigration paperwork, a federal judge said on Saturday. Rihan's humanitarian status was valid until October 2026. He also has pending "Green Card" and asylum applications.
IMMIGRATION STATUS REVOKED
Despite U.S. Customs and Border Patrol correcting the paperwork, ICE revoked Rihan's immigration status "without prior notice to Petitioner, without a hearing and without compliance with the procedural requirements," his attorneys claimed.
The student's Parole Revocation Letter was blunt.
"Your parole is terminated as it has been determined that neither humanitarian reasons nor the public benefit warrants your continued parole," the letter read, according to the filing.
DHS did not respond to questions about why it revoked Rihan's immigration status. But last week, the agency said the Biden administration never properly vetted humanitarian refugees from Afghanistan.
"Biden-era parole programs let in 190,000 Afghan nationals with a vetting process that was demonstrably inadequate," the spokesperson said. "No overseas criminal background checks were performed, social media accounts were not screened, and there was no systematic cross-referencing of information. In many cases, entry was granted on the basis of a single recommendation."
LEG CHAINS AND INTERROGATION
The new court documents lay out Rihan's timeline of events.
By 8:25 a.m., "he arrived in the parking lot of the Cheshire Police Department" where "ICE officers placed metal chains on his feet."
Around 9:30 a.m., "he arrived at the Hartford ICE office" where the teen said he was "interrogated by a team of four male ICE agents" who "repeatedly attempted to pressure him into signing a voluntary departure form."
Rihan refused.
"I don't have to sign anything," the student allegedly told agents. "This is my case."
By 1:15 p.m., Rihan had already been transferred to a detention facility 135 miles away in Plymouth, Mass.
"During the transport, a supervising officer told Petitioner that his asylum case was closed," the filing states.
WHAT'S NEXT?
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ordered the government to facilitate a bond hearing before an immigration judge "as soon as practicable, but in no case later than Monday, April 20."
Immigration courts are not open to the public.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal demanded the teen's immediate release.
"ICE's cruelty and unconscionable detaining of this high school student, Rihan, who has done everything right and nothing wrong, really cries out for justice," he said.
The case was transferred from Connecticut to Massachusetts because that is where Rihan is being held.
