Officials say refugee’s death was a homicide after Border Patrol agents left him alone in the cold
A nearly blind refugee was dropped off by Border Patrol outside a closed donut shop in Buffalo, left alone in the cold without help, and days later was found dead, in a case now officially ruled a homicide.
The Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office didn’t reach any conclusions about responsibility for Nurul Amin Shah Alam’s death, which the agency said was caused by complications of a perforated duodenal ulcer, precipitated by hypothermia and dehydration. Ruling a death a homicide means it resulted from another person’s actions — or inaction — but doesn’t necessarily mean that a crime was committed.
“This should not have happened,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, a Democrat, said at a news conference Wednesday. Asked whether the Border Patrol was responsible for his death, he declined to comment and said any such determination would be up to law enforcement agencies.
“This death had NOTHING to do” with Border Patrol, its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, said in a February 27 social media post, decrying news coverage of the case as an effort “to demonize our law enforcement.”
The official line is that he showed “no signs of distress,” which is one way to describe abandoning a vulnerable man in winter and hoping for the best. No one seems eager to claim responsibility, but that’s the point of systems like this: when something goes wrong, it’s not a decision, it’s a process. As we know, the process is somehow never at fault.