Cheshire Teachers Rally for Afghan Student Detained by ICE

Rihan, an Afghan high school senior at Cheshire High School, was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on April 6, 2026, while his classmates were on break. He’s been held at a detention facility in Massachusetts ever since.

On Monday, a federal judge ordered his release on a $1,500 bond. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t oppose the decision. The judge stopped short of ruling on his underlying immigration status.

His attorney, Lauren Cundick Petersen, described the bond ruling as the right outcome and has maintained that ICE detained Rihan based on an administrative error. The case carries a painful context: Rihan’s father, who worked as a translator for U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan, was detained by ICE in October 2025 and held for four months before being freed. April 6 marked the second time the family had faced an ICE arrest.

Rihan and his family fled Afghanistan and arrived in the United States in 2024. He enrolled at Cheshire High School shortly after, carrying limited English and confronting every layer of confusion that comes with walking into an American school for the first time. Learning the bell schedule. Figuring out how classrooms connect. Finding where to stand in the cafeteria. That was all before the actual coursework began.

Student Still Finding His Footing

Susan Chasen, a chemistry teacher at Cheshire High, was there on his first day. She watched him tackle two steep learning curves at once: English and high school science. “In the beginning, it felt like the communication was really tough for him, but I could tell that he was trying so hard, not just to learn the chemistry, but also to learn what it’s like to be a high school student in Connecticut,” Chasen said. He was quiet in the early weeks, the kind of student who absorbs everything but doesn’t yet have the words to show it.

Then came a moment Chasen still talks about. She was walking around the room during class when Rihan raised his hand. It was the first time he’d asked for help. She crossed the room, and he pointed to something on his paper, offered a few words in English. She walked through the problem, he followed it, wrote down the correct answer. “I was so excited that he raised his hand, and then I went over and he kind of pointed to something on his paper,” Chasen recalled. For teachers working with recently arrived students who are still finding their voice, that kind of moment doesn’t appear in any grade report. It’s just the work.

Rihan’s family came through a Special Immigrant Visa process connected to his father’s service as a U.S. military translator. After arriving in Connecticut, they received support from the International Rescue Committee’s Connecticut office in New Haven. Resettlement organizations typically provide limited support for only the first few months, which means families like Rihan’s are largely on their own by the time complications like this one surface.

Teachers Waiting for His Return

Amy Russell, who teaches English as a Second Language at Cheshire High, spoke to the CT Mirror about what made Rihan stand out among the students she works with. “He’s clearly deeply appreciative of this opportunity and wants to make the most of his education by working his hardest,” Russell said. She’d known students who were bright, students who were motivated, but she said his combination of gratitude and focus was something she didn’t encounter constantly.

Chasen’s account of him lands in the same place. “He was really appreciative of all the help that I was giving him,” she said. “He was just always polite, always sincere, always focused and really grateful for the learning that happened here and any time people spent kind of helping him out with things.”

Both teachers described waiting for word of his return to class. He arrived in the United States in 2024, enrolled at Cheshire High, and had been steadily working toward graduation as part of the class of 2026. He’s 20 years old. For context, Afghan students who come through refugee resettlement often arrive older than their American peers, having lost years of schooling to conflict and displacement. That’s not an exception in programs like this. It’s the norm.

As of Monday, bond was set. The next steps in Rihan’s immigration case remain unresolved.