Days after being released from a year of detention, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a blind Rohingya refugee who had been released from Border Patrol custody and abandoned at a Tim Horton’s 5 miles away from his home in Buffalo, New York, was found dead.
He had been in custody since February 2025 after he had wandered onto a neighbor’s porch on a walk near his home. Effectively blind, he had purchased a curtain rod to use as a walking stick, and when the police who answered his neighbor’s call asked him to put down his weapon (walking stick), he didn’t understand English well enough to comply, landing him in detention until he was counseled to agree to a plea deal a week before he was released.
William Lewis
This was an extremely preventable turn of events.
When I encountered the post on X reporting his death, my heart broke. In 2024, I helped coordinate the U.S. government response to the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. What Nurul and his family would have experienced even to have arrived as refugees in Buffalo defies steep odds, making his tragic end even more devastating.
Nurul Amin Shah Alam is from the Rakhine State in what is today called the country of Myanmar. The Southeast Asian country is in the midst of a destructive, multilateral civil war between a military junta that overthrew the democratic government in 2021 and a variety of armed groups, most of them ethnically organized, throughout the country. These include the Arakan Army, an ethnically Rakhine group that has lived alongside the Rohingya on the border of Bangladesh.
In 2024, Rohingya like Nurul found themselves amid an escalating conflict. The governing junta, quickly losing ground, instituted a forced conscription mechanism countrywide and drafted Rohingya into the military. The tragic irony is that this same military has been conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya that in 2017 alone led to the deaths of thousands and nearly 800,000 people fleeing the country. Now the Rohingya would be forced to fight for that same government.
In 2024, Rohingya like Nurul found themselves amid an escalating conflict.
They were given two weeks of basic training. Their intended role in the junta’s military? Human shields.
A Tim Horton’s Coffee and Bakery shop in Buffalo, N.Y., the site where Nurul Amin Shah Alam, was dropped off after being released by Border Patrol agents last week. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
Their presence in the junta’s military did not endear the Rohingya with the Arakan Army, a relationship that already was frayed. In May 2024, after the junta deserted a town with a large population of Rohingya, the Arakan Army burned it to the ground and displaced 45,000 people in two days. In the days that followed, I received substantial evidence of beheadings.
In August, a second town was attacked, and many of the Rohingya who tried to flee across the river to safety were struck by bombs dropped by drones. Their bodies would be recovered by family members when they washed up on the banks of the river. Those who fled across the river to Cox’s Bazaar were received by refugee camps experiencing cholera outbreaks caused by limited potable water due to the monsoons that crippled the water infrastructure. These were only a few of the crises that befell the Rohingya in 2024.
The plight of the Rohingya continues. As of the end of 2025, 16 million people had demonstrable humanitarian needs, out of a population of roughly 55 million. The central government only controls less than a quarter of the country, and although a “free” election was held in December, the military-aligned party won 80% of the vote — not exactly a sign of a free democratic process. The Department of State has kept the highest “Do Not Travel” advisory for U.S. citizens desiring to visit the country for some time, and Myanmar was among the countries targeted by the administration for a travel ban. The Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh are trapped.
This is the world from which Nurul and his family fled when they came to the United States in December of 2024: a world where opposing sides of a civil war targeted and slaughtered the same ethnic group. Nurul put more than 8,000 miles between him and Myanmar, hoping to escape the fate that has befallen thousands of Rohingya over the last decade.
Immediately following the post in my feed reporting Nurul’s death, I was arrested by one from the White House’s account. It declared “America is ONE NATION UNDER GOD.”
In Leviticus 19:14, God commands Israel, “Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord.” Nine verses later, that command is followed by the enjoinder: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
“Is this what it means to be one nation under God?”
The activities of this nation under God have not been particularly compassionate to the blind or the foreigner.
In October, the refugee ceiling, which in the past has specifically mentioned the Rohingya fleeing violence, reduced the number of refugees allowed to come to America from 125,000 to 7,500, and eliminated the Rohingya — and every other category of persecuted group in favor of Afrikaners from South Africa.
In November, the Department of Homeland Security announced Temporary Protection Status, which allows nationals from countries experiencing conflict or disaster to temporarily live and work in the United States, would be terminated for Myanmar. In explaining why it was terminating its status, DHS said while there still are humanitarian challenges, the improvements in governance stability and presence of elections were sufficiently encouraging to allow its citizens to return.
Is this what it means to be one nation under God? Mistreating the foreigner and putting stumbling blocks in front of the blind? The death of Nurul is emblematic of a political Christian culture of apathy. It is far easier to let refugees die than to drive them 5 miles home or allow them to find refuge on our shores.
If we are one nation under God, then we are also one nation under God’s judgment.
William Lewis is a policy specialist at World Relief.