The America wanted by Marshal, Craig, Glenn, Stan, and Jesse

 

The visually impaired refugee from Myanmar had spent a year at a county jail in Buffalo, when, on a cold winter day, he was picked up by Border Patrol agents and left alone at a coffee shop.

Five days later, he was found dead. 

The case, first reported by the Buffalo nonprofit news outlet Investigative Post, triggered outrage across New York State. Public officials and immigration advocates expressed dismay over the officers’ decision to drive the refugee, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, to the coffee shop without apparently telling his relatives or his lawyer where he was. City officials said that Mr. Shah Alam could not speak English.

The circumstances that spelled the fate of Mr. Shah Alam remain murky. His body was found at about 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, miles away from the Tim Hortons restaurant where the officers had released him from their custody. The Buffalo Police Department said that he had died of health complications but did not further specify the results of an autopsy report. 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said in an emailed statement that the officers had offered Mr. Shah Alam a courtesy ride after he was released from the jail, and that he accepted. The officials said that they dropped him off at the Tim Hortons, which they determined to be a “warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station.”