Photo credit: DVB
A nearly blind refugee from Myanmar who disappeared after US Border Patrol agents dropped him off at a Buffalo doughnut shop was found dead on the street five days later, prompting a police investigation and complaints from city officials that he’d been abandoned without care for his safety.
DVB reports that Nurul Amin Shah Alam was detained by Border Patrol agents on February 19 after his release from a county jail, but was let go that same day after federal authorities determined he wasn’t eligible for deportation.
The agents brought him to a Tim Hortons restaurant north of Buffalo’s downtown and dropped him there, authorities and advocates said. His family, which had initially expected him to walk out of jail, wasn’t informed he had been released. Shah Alam’s lawyer reported him missing to Buffalo police on February 22 after learning that an area immigration detention centre didn’t have him in custody.
Shah Alam was found dead Tuesday night near the downtown sports arena where the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres play. It was unclear how he got there from the Tim Horton’s restaurant, several miles away, or when he died.
The county medical examiner was investigating the cause of death, health officials said Thursday. The Buffalo Police Department told reporters that the medical examiner had concluded that the death was “health related” and ruled out exposure or homicide, but the Erie County Department of Health later disputed that account, saying no determination had been made. Detectives were investigating the events leading up to Shah Alam’s death, which was first reported by the Investigative Post.
