Through cries and tears, the family of Nurul Amin Shah Alam — the Rohingya refugee found dead on Wednesday after being abandoned by Border patrol agents — spoke at length about his life, struggles and untimely death on the streets of Buffalo.
Khaleda Shah, right, comforts Fatimah Abdul Roshid, center, wife of Nurul Shah Alam, along with her son, Mohamad Faisal Nurul Amin, left. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker.
Last Thursday — the day that Nurul Amin Shah Alam was set to be released from jail — his son, friends of the family and other supporters waited for hours outside the Erie County Holding Center.
His wife, Fatimah Abdul Roshid, had prepared a meal for the family at their Broadway-Fillmore apartment for Iftar, the breaking of the daily Ramadan fast.
“We were ready with food, clothing, everything,” she said. “We thought he would be able to break fast with us. He was so close, so close to my hand.”
Her husband would remain out of reach.
Instead of releasing Shah Alam to his family, Erie County Sheriff’s deputies turned him over to U.S. Border Patrol agents. Upon learning that ICE had declined to detain or deport Shah Alam, agents abandoned Shah Alam at a Tim Hortons coffee shop on Niagara Street in Buffalo’s Riverside neighborhood, 5 miles from his home. The agency said it had offered Shah Alam a “courtesy ride” to a “warm, safe location near his last known address.” But the shop had closed for the day. Only the drive-thru window was open. Video obtained by Investigative Post shows him walking through the parking lot, wearing orange booties issued by the jail.
Shah Alam — nearly blind, unable to speak English, with no money or phone — wandered the streets of Buffalo for six days before dying Tuesday night downtown on a sidewalk near KeyBank Center.
“On his dying bed, I couldn’t even see him,” Abdul Roshid said. “I didn’t even know how he was. I didn’t know where he was. That’s what breaks my heart. That’s the regret that will last forever.”
Abdul Roshid and one of her five sons, Mohamad Faisal Nurul Amin, spoke publicly for the first time on Saturday since the disappearance and death of Shah Alam.
Through translators, they told reporters gathered in a small upper room of the Rohingya Empowerment Community center on the city’s East Side about their flight from Burma to Malaysia to the United States to escape what the United Nations later termed the genocide of Rohingya Muslims. Through cries and tears, Abdul Roshid, Mohamad Faisal and three family friends who acted as translators relayed the anguish they’ve lived through over the past year.
The family said they want desperately to be reunited with siblings, grandchildren and other relatives still overseas. They’re seeking donations to cover rent and legal expenses and help other family members join them in America.
“Now that he’s gone, [and with] my children far away, I feel so heartbroken and helpless,” Abdul Roshid said.
A wife reacts to her husband’s death
After he arrived in the United States on December 24, 2024, her husband grew depressed by the cold and the absence of their three eldest sons, who remained in Malaysia. They, too, had applied to come to the United States as refugees but, because they were adults, their cases were handled separately. The family was forced to split up, Abdul Roshid said, so at least some of them could come to America.
“He was so depressed that he was always confined at this house,” she said. “He [would go] out in the freezing weather outside — he didn’t go anywhere — he just went outside to feel the pain.”
That helps explain why he went out for a walk on February 15, 2025, she said.
She now wishes he hadn’t. While walking around their Riverside neighborhood, Shah Alam got lost and wound up in the backyard of John and Tracy Chicone on Tonawanda Street. The couple called the police. Upon arrival, Buffalo officers Darcie Brown and Christina Colosimo Tasered, tackled and beat Shah Alam before handcuffing him. They later charged him with assault, trespassing and other offenses.
On Saturday, Abdul Roshid apologized.
“I apologize for my husband’s mistake that he was lost, that he ended up at a house, that he didn’t listen to the cops,” Abdul Roshid said. “But to be fair, he didn’t understand anything. He was illiterate. He doesn’t even know how to read, he doesn’t know how to write.”
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In police bodycam footage later released by the city, Shah Alam can be heard speaking in Rohingya and Malay. According to a translation by the Washington Post, Shah Alam asks God for help and attempts to explain to the police that he lives nearby and had been on a walk to the store.
Shah Alam spent the next year in jail. His attorney and family decided to not bail him out because they feared if they did, ICE would detain him in a facility out of state or even deport him.
Abdul Roshid said her husband lost a significant amount of weight while in prison because he could barely eat. She said she, too, would fast so she could feel his pain. At times, she said, community members had to encourage her to eat so that her health wouldn’t worsen and she could care for her children.
She said her husband’s eyesight worsened significantly in the jail and he developed other health problems, too. She questioned why the sheriff’s office didn’t take better care of him.
“My question is, how did you leave him alone in that state? You could have called me,” she said.
A sign for Shah Alam downtown Buffalo. Photo contributed by reader.
After accepting a plea deal from the Erie County District Attorney, Shah Alam posted bail last week. Border Patrol, however, intercepted him. In statements online this week, the Department of Homeland Security has called his death tragic but denied responsibility.
“It is ridiculous to blame Border Patrol for an individual’s death a week after their last interaction with them,” the department posted on X on Friday.
Members of Congress, led by Buffalo Rep. Tim Kennedy, are calling for state and federal investigations into Shah Alam’s death. Kennedy has requested New York State Attorney General Letitia James open an investigation and on Friday demanded an investigation and answers from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“As members of Congress, we demand answers and justice for his family,” Rep. Grace Meng, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said Friday. “The Department of Homeland Security must be held accountable.”
Abdul Roshid said Saturday that she, too, wanted justice. But justice for her, she said, would be reuniting with her sons and other family currently living in Malaysia.
“I want to hug them and to tell them how much I love them, how much they mean to me,” she said. “And if anything happens to me, at least I get to say goodbye to them. Unlike my husband.”
Shah Alam’s life and journey
Shah Alam was born in 1970 in a small village in Burma. A Muslim in a majority-Buddhist country, he and his family faced persecution beginning when he was a child in the late 1970s. The military would travel village to village looking for men so they could put them to work, his wife said.
“When they come to our village, you know, everybody gets scared,” she said. “We used to hide at the back of the house.”
At one point, she said, he was sent to do unpaid labor for the military.
She met Shah Alam through an arranged marriage, she said, and came to love him once she saw that he was a “great man.”
“He never raised his voice at me. He loved me. He always fulfilled all my wishes without me even asking,” she said. “People talk about Dream Man. I didn’t even ask for one, but Allah blessed me with such a great man. And five beautiful children.”
Both devout Muslims, she said she and Shah Alam began every morning praying together “to keep our bond and love together.”
He would then find work where he could, bringing home money or food. She kept up their home, she said, and raised the children.
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In 2002, Shah Alam fled to Malaysia. He was 32 at the time. He spent the next decade largely separated from his wife and children, working manual labor jobs to earn money. He worked for a time as a blacksmith and in various construction jobs. He was also an ironworker for a time, she said.
“Every year he would work really hard, and then he would make sure he had enough money to bring one child [to Malaysia],” she said. “He did that three years in a row.”
Finally, she said, he managed to bring her and their youngest son to Malaysia. That was in 2013.
While the family was reunited, they were undocumented immigrants, meaning they could not enroll in school, Mohamad Faisal explained. He liked school, he said, and wanted to continue learning in Malaysia but couldn’t.
Eventually, Mohamad Faisal said, his father was able to send him to a community school for a partial education.
“He always prioritized education,” he said. “He always said that … ‘I do not care for myself, I’m going to ensure with my last bit of money that I have, I’m going to make sure it’s invested in education.’ ”
Shah Alam’s son said he wishes one day to complete a formal education and become an engineer. That’s his “American dream,” he said.
The family began the process to come to the United States as refugees nearly a decade before their arrival, eventually resettling in Buffalo in December 2024 after the Biden administration allowed in thousands of Rohingya refugees. When Donald Trump took office, the federal government stopped accepting new refugees, leaving the three eldest sons in Malaysia.
One reason they came to the United States, Abdul Roshid said, was so the family would be properly documented as refugees and could perform Hajj, the traditional five-day Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. They lacked proper documentation to make the journey when they lived in Malaysia, she said.
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Throughout his life, Abdul Roshid said, Shah Alam maintained a sense of levity and humor. He would joke that while God made him blind in one eye, he gave him extra vision in the other.
“He was a very calm and collected man,” she said. “He didn’t take anything personal. He would take his curses as a blessing.”
All she wants now, she said, is to be reunited with her family. Mohammed “Prince” Hussein said other Rohingya refugees in Buffalo feel similarly. He and his family arrived in Buffalo just weeks after Shah Alam.
“We survived genocide, we survived discrimination, we survived everything else,” he said. “We don’t [even] want to have equal rights. We are used to it, not having equal rights. All we wanted to have was family.”
posted 12 hours ago – February 28, 2026
