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The latest chapter in what one historian called “the ongoing horror story of American immigration enforcement” unfolded in Buffalo, New York this week after Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, was released from a county jail where he’d been held for a year.

As Buffalo-based outlet the Investigative Post reported Wednesday, the nearly blind man was found dead on Tuesday evening, five days after US Border Patrol agents who had picked him up from the jail dropped him off at a coffee shop. They neglected to inform his lawyer or family where he was, making it impossible for Shah Alam to find his way home in sub-freezing temperatures.

Shah Alam, who was blind in one eye and had partial, blurry vision in the other, had gotten lost one day in February 2025 and ended up on a woman’s porch with a curtain rod he used as a walking stick.

The woman called the police, who ordered Shah Alam to drop his “weapon” — the walking stick — and then Tasered, beat, and arrested him.

Shah Alam, who could not speak English and did not understand the police officers’ orders, was charged with assault, trespassing, and possession of a weapon and taken to Erie County Holding Center.

Journalists Jailed by ICE Are Revealing the Horrors of Incarceration

His family, which includes a wife and two sons, chose not to bail him out of the county jail. His arrest had come a month into President Donald Trump’s second term, and they feared US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would detain him if he was released and send him to a detention center out of state.

Benjamin Macaluso, an attorney with Legal Aid Bureau who was representing Shah Alam, told the Investigative Post that he had been released on bail last week after reaching a deal with the Erie County District Attorney’s office, agreeing to plead........

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