Blind Refugee Who Escaped Genocide Found Dead After Being Abandoned by Border Patrol

Nurul Amin Shah Alam had, in many ways, defied the odds to escape a genocide in Myanmar. A Rohingya refugee from the besieged Rakhine state, he was nearly blind, unable to speak any English, and couldn’t read, write, or use electric devices when he fled to the U.S. in December 2024.

Yet, despite surviving a literal ethnic cleansing, he was found dead outside a coffee shop in Buffalo, New York—five miles away from home, where he lived with his wife and two sons—after Customs and Border Patrol goons abandoned him, without notifying any of his lawyers or family. 

Shah Alam first went missing on Thursday, February 19, the same day he was released from custody at the Erie County Holding Center, where he’d been imprisoned for a little over a year. He was arrested because on February 15, 2025, he was out for a walk in his neighborhood when he got lost and wandered onto a woman’s porch, who called the police. He was using a curtain rod as a walking stick, which officers demanded he drop. When he didn’t, they tased, beat, and arrested him. According to a police report, he was being held on two counts of assault with intent to cause injury to an officer and was released under a plea deal, straight into the arms of Border Patrol agents.

After picking him up at around 4:39 p.m. on February 19, the immigration goons realized they had no reason to hold him. His body was found five days later, four miles from the Tim Hortons where they allegedly dumped him off. 

Good fucking morning to everybody except the ICE agents who kidnapped a blind man, realized they had no basis to deport him, and then released him five miles from his home. He died, scared and alone, just trying to find his way back to his house. That’s evil.

— Mike Nellis (@mikenellis.bsky.social) February 26, 2026 at 8:50 AM

“He cannot use a phone,” Shah Alam’s lawyer told the Investigative Post. “He doesn’t know his address, he doesn’t know phone numbers, he can’t communicate, he can’t see. And they just left him.”

In a statement released on Wednesday, Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan (D) called Shah Alam’s death “preventable,” “deeply disturbing,” and a “dereliction of duty” by CBP. (We’ll assume he meant a “dereliction” of duty by the police officers that arrested him in the first place, too.) “A vulnerable man—nearly blind and unable to speak English—was left alone on a cold winter night with no known attempt to leave him in a safe, secure location,” said Ryan. “That decision from U.S. Customs and Border Protection was unprofessional and inhumane.”

Naturally, a CBP spokesperson defended themselves to CNN by asserting that Shah Alam was “not amenable to removal,” before adding their own version of the story. “Border Patrol agents offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept to a coffee shop, determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station.” They did not explain why they never notified his lawyers or family of his release to the coffee shop. They started a missing persons case on the Sunday before his body was found.

The cruelty and inhumanity of this Administration’s policies have left another person dead—as CBP dropped off Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a nearly blind refugee living in Buffalo NY, alone on a cold winter night miles from his home.

This cruelty must end.

— Rep. Melanie Stansbury (NM-01) (@repstansbury.bsky.social) February 25, 2026 at 10:46 PM

The story marks yet another grim instance within the growing constellation of immigration-related deaths, a direct consequence of Trump’s diabolical deportation campaign that’s led to the arrests of nearly 400,000, the detentions of nearly 70,000, and the deportations of nearly 397,000. So far in 2026, at least six people have died in ICE custody.

The Buffalo Police Department says it plans to launch an investigation into the “circumstances and timeframe of events leading up to [Shah Alam’s] death following his release from custody.” Something tells me, however, that we already know exactly how this all happened, and we know exactly who’s to blame.

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