Burmese Rohingya refugee

Nearly blind refugee abandoned by US border patrol found dead in Buffalo

Investigation under way after man was dropped off five miles from home but family wasn’t notified, officials say

Sara BraunWed 25 Feb 2026

A nearly blind Burmese refugee who was abandoned by border patrol agents has been found dead in Buffalo, New York, city officials confirmed.

Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, had been missing since 19 February, when he was dropped off by border patrol following his release from Erie county holding center, according to the Investigative Post.

A city hall spokesperson, Ian Ott, told the Investigative Post that homicide detectives were “investigating the circumstances and timeframe of events leading up to his death, following his release from custody”.

Shah Alam had been in the Erie county holding center for the past year, after being arrested by Buffalo police in 2025 on charges of assault, trespassing and possession of a weapon. The arrest stemmed from an incident in which Shah Alam got lost while on a walk and ended up on the porch of a woman’s home. He had been using a curtain rod as a walking stick, according to his attorney.

The woman called the police, and when Shah Alam did not follow police commands to drop his curtain rod, they Tasered and beat him, his attorney said.

He was released on bail, and then transferred to border patrol custody.

Border patrol agents then dropped him off at a Tim Hortons about five miles from his home. Neither his attorney nor his family were notified of his release.

“We are saddened to learn that our client, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, was found deceased last night in the City of Buffalo,” the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo said in a statement shared with the Guardian.

Jessica Zweng, Substack:

In the post-civil rights era of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the United States had banned formal categories of discrimination and was on the brink of prison abolition. During the 1980’s backlash, the manufactured drug-war replaced race with crime as the socially acceptable marker of dangerousness and the modern era of mass incarceration and immigration detention began. Following the 9/11 attacks, the cross-stitching of everyday criminality, immigration control, and national security terrorized common crime and solidified an apparatus of government power primed to exercise the endgame of a nationalist authoritarian regime. The centerpiece of this transformation was a federal enforcement agency whose origin myth is to rid the nation’s interior of the disposable and despised—socially, legally, and politically enabled through the designation of the “criminal alien.”