Shah Alam had been in the Erie County Holding Center since February 2025 after being arrested by Buffalo police. On February 15 last year, he had been out for a walk in his neighborhood and had been using a curtain rod he purchased as a walking stick.
Nearly blind and with no ability to speak English, Shah Alam got lost and ended up on the porch of a woman’s home as she was letting her dog out, according to Macaluso. Shah Alam is completely blind in one eye and can only see with blurry vision for several feet in the other, according to Macaluso.
The woman called police, Macaluso said. When Shah Alam did not follow police commands to drop his curtain rod, they Tasered and beat him, then arrested him, Macaluso said. The officers suffered minor injuries in the scuffle, he said.
A spokesperson for Border Patrol, in a statement Wednesday evening, said after agents determined Shah Alam was not supposed to be in their custody, they “offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept to a coffee shop.” That Tim Hortons, the spokesperson said, was “determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station.”
Agents, however, did not notify Macaluso or Shah Alam’s family of his release to the coffee shop. Macaluso previously told Investigative Post he expected Shah Alam to be taken to the ICE detention center in Batavia and that his client would be released from there.
Communicate with them, do something other than calling armed thugs to remove them. Anyone not living in a cave should be aware of all the people killed by the police because someone, often someone that loved them, trusted the police to help them, whether they were going through a mental health crisis, or high on drugs, or just weren’t answering their phone and wanted to make sure they were alright.
Case and point, this case video haunts me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JO0DE3ZoNU
Communication is not an option when the man speaks no English and is functionally blind. You can’t mime any thing. You wouldn’t have been able to guess his language either to use a translator app, because it’s not like he was speaking something recognizable to the average American.
I agree, calling the police is a gamble at best, but so is letting a stranger into your home who is holding a curtain rod. It was not obviously a walking stick with red tape on the end. Unfortunately, as a woman in America, your default is to be wary if not afraid of men.
This situation just sucks for everyone involved, and is a downright tragedy for the man. He was abused by the authorities, not the random woman whose porch he ended up on.
HE DIDN’T SPEAK ENGLISH! And its not like he spoke Spanish or something somewhat common that you could find a translator. He was Rohingyan. His language is obscure even in his native country.
And the blindness gets in the way of a lot of physical communication, though cultural differences could make even that difficult impossible to understand even if both parties can see fine.
And I wouldn’t blame anyone for being nervous about what the uncommunicative person on their porch with a curtain rod might intend.
If there was an advice post that just asked what to do about a random stranger on a woman’s porch that was holding a curtain rod and wasn’t communicating, I’d bet “call the police” would be the most common response. It’s so easy to judge the best actions when you know the extra context the article provided.