Calling his arrest unjust and unlawful, elected officials and advocates on Tuesday called for the immediate release of an Afghan man who had legally resettled in Connecticut before his Wednesday seizure by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in East Hartford.
“Zia has done everything right. He's followed the rules. He has no criminal history,” the man’s lawyer, Lauren Petersen, told reporters on a Tuesday press call. “Zia was approved for humanitarian parole in 2024 due to direct Taliban threats.”
Connecticut Public is withholding Zia’s last name due to safety concerns for his family.
“Zia's detention is not only unlawful, it undermines trust in the entire immigration process,” Petersen said. “Following the rules is supposed to protect you. It's not supposed to land you in detention.”
Petersen said Zia “faces death” if removed to his native Afghanistan due to his work with the U.S. military.
Petersen said Zia had just attended a routine appointment at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in East Hartford when he was arrested. A family friend who accompanied Zia to the appointment told Petersen the agents who made the arrest wore masks.
Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Jahana Hayes were among the elected officials calling for Zia’s release.
“What happened to him is the worst kind of abhorrent violation of basic decency,” Blumenthal said. “For masked agents to snatch someone off the street with no warning, no counsel, no opportunity even to know who is doing it while it's in process is un-American, and we all ought to be ashamed and disgraced by what has happened to him.”
Blumenthal and Hayes highlighted that cases like Zia’s may discourage others abroad from helping the U.S. military.
“There is a fundamental erosion of trust and erosion of credibility,” Hayes said. “Will people trust the United States? Does our word mean anything?”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson on Tuesday confirmed that ICE had arrested Zia, claiming that he is “currently under investigation for a serious criminal allegation.”
“All of his claims will be heard by a judge. Any Afghan who fears persecution is able to request relief,” the statement continued.
Petersen said that claim did not comport with the legal facts of Zia’s case.
“The expedited removal order that's been issued to him, it doesn't accord with a criminal investigation, because that would require a different legal process,” Petersen said. “[ICE is] claiming that he had entered illegally or without documents. Those are the only bases on which an alien can be put into expedited removal. Only those two bases. That claim is false.”
Shawn VanDiver is a Navy veteran who heads the nonprofit #AfghanEvac, which advocates on behalf of Afghan allies who aided the U.S. in their home country. He said DHS’s statement should be scrutinized.
“We have seen DHS in numerous cases, over and over and over again, make things up, stretch the truth, outright lie to the American people,” VanDiver said. “Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, said, ‘Oh, things are great in Afghanistan. It's perfectly safe to send people back.’ And this isn't a partisan statement, it's a factual statement: These people are full of [expletive].”
Maggie Mitchell Salem, executive director of New Haven-based Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, or IRIS, said Zia’s arrest left her “horrified.”
“I think the cruelty is the point,” Mitchell Salem said. “I think it is meant to scare and intimidate and sow fear in all immigrant communities in the U.S., and, increasingly, it looks like the administration is starting to turn on those that are here legally.”
As of Tuesday, Zia was being held in a detention facility in Plymouth, Massachusetts, his removal stayed by a court order issued Thursday.
