In June 2025, sixteen-year-old Kevin and his father were arrested in Hartford, Connecticut, after a scheduled immigration check-in, even though neither had a criminal record. Kevin’s father was deported to Ecuador, while Kevin, whose full name has been withheld due to safety and privacy concerns, waited in Texas to learn his fate.
Soon after they were arrested, lawyers from what was later formalized into The American Immigrant Legal Clinic (TAILC) in Connecticut jumped into action to coordinate efforts between there and Texas to get Kevin released. The teenager ultimately spent six months in the Texas juvenile detention center, during which he missed his high school graduation. On December 23, he was finally released as a result of TAILC’s efforts filing a habeas petition, and returned on Christmas Eve to Meriden, Connecticut, where he was met with a joyful celebration at the public library and belatedly awarded his high school diploma.
TAILC grew out of New Haven immigration attorney Glenn Formica’s frustration as he found himself unable to help all the immigrant community members who sought his aid. In 2020 alone, he tells The Progressive, he represented more than 140 clients pro bono.
“I got involved in immigration in 1999,” he says. “At the time I was doing property law, and was bored out of my mind.” He initially became involved with a youth-led organization called Connecticut Students for a Dream, which represents undocumented youth in the state to help them and other members of their communities access legal services.
Formica gradually transferred his private immigration practice to another attorney, and now works full time with TAILC. Since the clinic launched in April 2026, it has succeeded in getting thirty-two immigrant community members released from detention. Some now have permanent status; others have temporary status while their cases are pending.
Formica says TAILC’s budget is small by design. “One of our goals is to show how efficiently you can provide representation for people,” he says. “We’re playing with tech, with workflows, and doing something I think is unique: We’re giving a law firm to retired lawyers.”
TAILC provides overhead and staff support for about fifteen volunteer attorneys, in addition to three full-time employees. Often, the volunteers are experienced attorneys pushed into early retirement who have a lot of fight left, Formica says.
“When a volunteer attorney meets with someone in their prison cell, something magic happens,” he says, “and they just say, ‘I’ll figure it out.’”
One such volunteer is Susan Webb, a Stamford-based attorney who works part time in civil litigation while transitioning toward retirement.
“It seemed to me that in this moment, I have some skills that could be helpful,” she tells The Progressive. “I started taking on little bits here and there, and then started making visits to the Plymouth [Massachusetts] immigrant detention center to see if there’s a pathway for [detainees to be released]. Now I’m coordinating with other volunteer attorneys and doing a few cases of my own. It’s intense, but for those of us doing it we feel like it’s where we have to be.”
It’s not just retired attorneys who have joined as volunteers and taught themselves immigration law, but some of the state’s highest-profile working attorneys as well. That’s a positive development, Formica says, because under the Trump Administration, immigration case work has become “a cage fight.”
TAILC also benefits from its working relationship with Connecticut Students for a Dream, which has taken on a coordinating role in immigrant rights defense, hosting monthly statewide virtual calls for rapid response groups throughout the state with its Connecticut Immigrant Support Network. The organization’s executive director, Tabitha Sookdeo, says representatives from local and national immigration groups initially came together in 2024 to plan potential responses to the outcome of the presidential election, identifying choke points in the immigration landscape.
“It became apparent that the legal side required more capacity,” she says, “because there aren’t enough immigration attorneys in Connecticut.” She’s heartened by the number of attorneys they’ve since onboarded to help with immigration cases, including the cases of several high school and college students. In late August, ICE swept through Connecticut, arresting at least 118 immigrants throughout the state, at least sixty-five of whom were from Danbury. TAILC has since added dozens of these cases to its workload.
Matt Blumenthal, a Connecticut State Representative and attorney, says he asked Formica how he could be of help when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection ramped up their deportation efforts under the Trump Administration. Blumenthal says he taught himself how to help immigrant detainees challenge their detentions. “One thing [Formica] told me, which is very true, is that there’s no magic way to do these cases,” he says. “What matters is that you act quickly, and provide thoughtful legal representation. It makes a world of difference, because immigrants without counsel are detained and deported and denied bond at far greater rates than those who are represented, because immigration law is very complex.”
Blumenthal represented Kevin in court. He filed motions to show cause for a temporary restraining order against the Department of Homeland Security. Kevin was ultimately released, and qualified for a program called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, which is intended for minors who don’t have an adult they can rely on. Recipients of immigrant juvenile status aren’t guaranteed the ability to stay in the country, but it does allow them to apply for legal permanent residency, and eventually for citizenship, if they observe all the rules and regulations for temporary status.
When his Connecticut community welcomed him home last December at the public library, Kevin thanked the lawyers who helped free him.
“It’s very hard to go through this process, and I’ve seen a lot of people that have had a hard time because of it,” he said. “It’s not easy and we’re all human and we shouldn’t be treated like this.”
Editor’s note: The Susan Webb interviewed for this story bears no relation to Progressive staff member Susan Webb.