A former Yale student detained recently by immigration agents in Hartford’s federal courthouse received medical attention after being hit seven times with Tasers by immigration agents who then rebuked a judge who tried to intervene, according to information presented in court Thursday.

New details of the May 9 detention of Afghan refugee and former student Saifullah Khan by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents became public Thursday when Khan argued for release on bond at a federal immigration court in Chelmsford, Mass.

The Department of Homeland Security said Khan is dangerous and a flight risk — in part because he tried to run away from the plain clothes ICE against who he said failed to identify themselves before firing Tasers at him on the sixth floor of the secure federal building on Main Street in Hartford.

U.S. Immigration Judge Donald R. Ostrom did not immediately rule on bond. Ostrom said he was taking the matter “under advisement” and would issue a written decision, departing from his practice in other cases Thursday in which he issued rapid fire decisions on release from the bench.

Hartford attorney Gregory C. Osakwe, who represented Khan, argued for bond, disputing government arguments about danger and flight, while providing more information about how ICE agents made the arrest.

Osakwe said Khan, who had a pending asylum application, had been summoned to appear in immigration court and was leaving Judge Ted Doolittle’s courtroom after the hearing was continued to a future date.

“When he was exiting the court on the sixth floor in Hartford, ICE officials approached him,” Osakwe said. “There was no reason to arrest him. They had the authority, but it was highly irregular because he had an affirmative application which was pending.

“They didn’t identify themselves. They sought to grab him. And then he, not knowing who they were, started running back to the court and he was tasered seven times. Judge Doolittle came out of the court and asked ICE officers, ’Why are you doing this?’ And they told him he should not interfere with a lawful arrest. “

“As a matter of fact, the ICE officers subsequently told (Khan) that the judge was a traitor for coming out to challenge them,” Osakwe said.

He said Khan may have suffered a concussion and received a medical examination.

No one could be reached at Hartford’s ICE office Thursday afternoon.

Osakwe also disputed claims by the Department of Homeland Security that it has not been able to locate Khan for years. Among other things, he told the court the department has mailed immigration forms to his apartment.

Khan, who is 32, is married to a U.S. citizen and lives in New Haven. He became well-known in legal circles a decade ago because of a sexual assault accusation that resulted in his expulsion from Yale and a defamation suit he filed against university in retaliation after a jury acquitted him of the sexual assault charges.

He was born in a Pakistani refugee camp after his family was forced from Afghanistan by the Taliban. He was admitted to Yale as a scholarship student and was on track to graduate in 2016 until the expulsion.

On Halloween night in 2015, a female student who lived in Khan’s dormitory accused him of sexually assaulting her. He said they spent the night together and engaged in consensual sex after attending a party and a performance by the Yale Student Orchestra earlier in the evening.

Khan denied the sexual assault allegation. But he was ultimately expelled after an inquiry by Yale’s University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct.

After his exoneration in court, Khan sued Yale and his accuser, asserting that he had been treated unfairly by Yale’s in-house disciplinary process. Two appeals courts agreed and Yale has not succeeded in winning dismissal of the defamation suit.

Homeland Security attorney Alexandra Wolff, who argued against bond, said Khan also was the subject of a protective order in the state of Washington in 2018. There was no criminal charge in that matter, which arose from an intimate relationship.

Wolff argued that the Yale accusation and the Washington order are interactions with law enforcement that support the DHS argument that Khan is dangerous. She said the department has not been able to confirm Khan was acquitted of the Yale charges because the transcript of the trial resulting in exoneration has been partially sealed to hide the accuser’s identity.

“It does appear that the respondent was acquitted of those charges,” Wolff said. “It is DHS’s position that DHS has not been able to independently verify the acquittal because the case was sealed.”

“Additionally the department posits that there are multiple ways to be a danger to the community and not just through criminal convictions or interactions with law enforcement,” Wolff said.

Wolff was referring specifically to a rebuke of Khan by the U.S. District judge presiding over the defamation suit. After the court denied an attempt by Khan to unseal the identity of his accuser, he posted on social media that he had been “gagged.” The court said the post was an encouragement to others to publicly identify the accuser in violation of the confidentiality order.

DHS considers Khan a flight risk because, in spite of the publicity that has accompanied his suit against Yale, the department had been unable to locate him for years, Wolff said..“The respondent has been unable to be found for the last several years,” Wolff said. “I can proffer as a representative of DHS that ICE has been attempting to locate this respondent since 2016 and they have been unable to locate him. Now a government agency being unable to locate someone should be significant evidence of flight.”

Osakwe said claims that Khan could not be found are untrue.

He said Khan has lived at his current address for seven years and his U.S. wife has submitted documentation of their marriage to immigration authorities as part of the couple’s argument against deportation. Their address can be found in forms documenting the marriage, as well as other correspondence — including forms and notifications immigration authorities have addressed to Khan.

“When counsel proffers that they have been trying to locate him and have been unable to do that, it is factually inaccurate,” Osakwe said. “He has not lived at any other address for the past seven years. They have his address. The only time they made an effort to detain him was when he had come to the court.”

Osakwe was critical of how Khan was detained.

“It is very unfortunate that officers of the United States government would do that,” he said. “It is a pattern that they are doing right now to intimidate people. That officers would make derogatory statements to an immigration judge …is also very unfortunate.”

Khan, who appeared at the hearing remotely by video link wearing a green prison uniform from a detention center in Plymouth, Mass. said at the end of the hearing that he will comply with any conditions of release.

“I have been attending court appearances in the criminal matter and the civil matters and this one voluntarily over the past nine years,” he said.

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