Cheshire Student Returns Home After ICE Detention

Rihan came home to Cheshire on Friday.

The high school senior, detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on April 6 after agents pulled him from a car outside his family’s home, stood quietly at the side of a Town Hall room packed with elected officials, teachers, activists, and his attorney. He didn’t take questions or pose for photos. When attorney Lauren Cundick Petersen welcomed him home from the podium, he said, simply, “thank you.”

That was enough.

Petersen has been working to free Rihan since the moment ICE took him. The government’s argument for his detention, she said, was a computer system error about when his humanitarian parole status expires. The family came to the United States legally under that parole program, which is set to expire in October 2026. They were actively applying for green cards when agents showed up.

A family already familiar with this

Rihan’s father, Zia, went through something nearly identical last year. ICE detained Zia during a routine immigration appointment in East Hartford, and he spent four months at the same Plymouth, Massachusetts detention facility where his son would later be held. Zia was a translator for U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan. No criminal history. Came here legally. Released after four months.

When ICE took Rihan on April 6, his uncle Tariq was in the car with him.

Tariq addressed the crowd Friday. “We are very appreciative of and grateful to all the Cheshire community and all the delegations and everybody who has supported us in this hard time,” he said.

Still, Rihan’s parole status, revoked when he was detained, has not been reinstated. The family’s situation is not resolved. A celebration, yes, but also something more fragile than that.

Lamont and Tong both showed up

Gov. Ned Lamont attended the welcome-back gathering and said he’d spoken directly with Rihan about his weeks at the Plymouth facility. What stuck with Lamont wasn’t a horror story about conditions. It was this: Rihan asked for his homework so he wouldn’t fall behind.

“He shared a room with four other folks, some quite a bit older, very different backgrounds, and Rihan was there, and he asked to get his homework,” Lamont said. “He wanted to do his homework so he didn’t fall behind.”

“We’re so proud that you’re back, so proud that you call Cheshire home, so proud that you call Connecticut home, and your story is amazing,” the governor added.

Attorney General William Tong framed Rihan’s release as proof that organized pressure works. He told Rihan and his family that Connecticut’s support would continue as they fight to stay in the country. “This is your home,” Tong said, “and don’t let anybody else tell you that it’s not.”

That kind of direct reassurance from the state’s top law enforcement officer matters right now. Connecticut has positioned itself, through Tong’s office especially, as a counterweight to federal immigration enforcement. Whether that positioning translates into durable legal protection for families like Rihan’s is a different question.

Bigger picture, local consequences

The family’s case sits inside a much larger policy fight. The Trump administration is currently weighing a plan to send roughly 1,100 Afghan allies from a refugee camp in Qatar to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a move that has alarmed refugee advocates and members of Congress alike. Afghan families who came to the U.S. on humanitarian parole after the 2021 withdrawal are watching what happens to those still in third countries as a signal of what may happen to them.

The Cheshire family’s parole expires in October. Their green card applications remain pending. Rihan’s parole status is still revoked even though he’s home. These are not abstractions. That October deadline is six months away.

Reporting from CT Mirror first covered Friday’s gathering in detail.

For Cheshire residents watching this play out, the case raises questions the town hasn’t had to answer before, at least not so publicly. It’s a 30,000-person town in New Haven County, not a sanctuary city, not a flashpoint. Just a place where a kid did his homework in a detention center and then came home to a room full of people who were relieved to see him.

What to watch: Rihan’s family faces an October deadline on their parole status, and their green card applications are still working through a federal system that, by the government’s own admission, made an error here. Petersen and Tong’s office are both involved. This isn’t over.