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U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating speak to reporters outside the Plymouth County Correctional Facility on August 6, 2025. Credit: Kathleen McWilliams / Office of Sen. Richard Blumenthal

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal traveled to Plymouth, Massachusetts on Wednesday to visit an Afghan man, known as “Zia S.”, who is being held in detention there by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Zia S., whose full name is not being used due to concerns about his safety, came to the U.S. through a preapproved process called humanitarian parole. He had served as an interpreter for U.S. Armed Forces in his native Afghanistan.

Zia S. was detained despite, Blumenthal said, “following every single rule, he was doing everything right, including serving this country at great risk to himself and his family.”

On July 16, Zia S. was picked up by masked ICE agents after a standard appointment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in East Hartford. In the aftermath, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said in a statement that Zia S. was “under investigation for a serious allegation.”

Since then, a judge has barred the government from deporting Zia S. for the time being. Prosecutors have also said in a court filing that Zia S. is a risk to U.S. national security.

After the visit Wednesday, Blumenthal decried the detention to members of the press, and said that Zia S. was only picked up because ICE has to “make a quota.”

“That’s the only reason Zia is locked up away from his family, away from his job, away from his community, outrageously and tragically. It is cruel and it is stupid,” he said to reporters outside the facility.

In May, White House Advisor Stephen Miller told Fox News that the administration planned to make a minimum of 3,000 daily arrests, but the Trump Administration has since denied that such numerical quotas exist.

On Wednesday, Blumenthal was unequivocal in his support of Zia S. and told The Connecticut Mirror that he hasn’t seen anything to support the claim that he is a national security threat.

“There is no security threat. If there were a security threat, they would have offered to tell me,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal said he planned to demand any such information be shown to him: “I’m going to do it as a senator who has a top secret clearance and the need to know. But I’ve listened to him and his story, and if they have some security threat, it’s totally fabricated.”

Blumenthal had the chance Wednesday to tour the Plymouth County Correctional Facility where ICE detainees are held, which he described as clean and safe. The senator spent about half an hour visiting with Zia S, who he described as hopeful; Blumenthal said a court hearing has been scheduled in Zia S’s case for September.

Blumenthal said that Zia S. has a big smile and described him as a lovely and decent human being. But he said, “the sadness is palpable, the pain is real. He is away from his family.”

Laura Tillman is CT Mirror’s Human Services Reporter. She shares responsibility for covering housing, child protection, mental health and addiction, developmental disabilities, and other vulnerable populations. Laura began her career in journalism at the Brownsville Herald in 2007, covering the U.S.–Mexico border, and worked as a statehouse reporter for the Associated Press in Mississippi. She was most recently a producer of the national security podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen” and is the author of two nonfiction books: The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts (2016) and The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia (2023), which was just awarded the 2024 James Beard Award for literary writing. Her freelance work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Laura holds a degree in International Studies from Vassar College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Goucher College.