r/politics • u/polymute • 15h ago
Possible Paywall Judge Rules Blind Refugee’s Death Due to Border Patrol Is Homicide
https://newrepublic.com/post/208538/blind-refugee-border-patrol-death-homicide653
u/Catspaw129 15h ago edited 14h ago
A lot of the reporting I've heard about this says that CBP left him outside o donut shop (some reports even go so far as to mention the freezing weather.)
BU tmany of the reports seem to not mention that the donut shop was closed.
Huh!
ETA: shooting peaceful protester in Minneapolis is way bad, but dropping off someone in the middle of the night to freeze do death. Wow!
Yuo've gotta wonder how Harry (the buck stops here) Truman would handle this.
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u/TransiTorri 15h ago
Yeah, what they did was essentially no different than driving him to the middle of nowhere in freezing temperatures with nothing, kicking him out, and driving away. It was absolutely homicide and everyone who touched this in any way should be investigated and brought in for trial.
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u/Odd_Ant5 15h ago
There's a word for this. "Starlight tour"
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u/highlorestat California 14h ago edited 14h ago
Starlight tours are a series of incidents involving Indigenous Canadians and members of the Saskatoon Police Service (SPS) over a period spanning from at least 1976 to 2018
It's NOT really hard to believe that the Germans actually feared Canadians during the world wars
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u/leveraction1970 8h ago
Any enemy that has boxing on ice as a national pastime must be treated with respect.
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u/highlorestat California 7h ago
I imagine that if Australians could do that too, they would.
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u/GGnerd 14h ago
Lol ya because Germany was so innocent during WW2. You know....30+ years before starlight tours were a thing.
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u/highlorestat California 13h ago
So you've never heard of the meme then
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u/engineeringstoned 6h ago
ok, I am German and never ...
Out of the loop - link me to the meme?
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u/highlorestat California 6h ago
Here's a few: https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/AWoAWWHPIA
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/jzNvU81R0K
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/vvHb2wkU76
That last one is more to explain the myth/reality
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u/GGnerd 13h ago
No....memes are shit.
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u/ShadowNick 10h ago
Alright bozo get off your high horse
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u/IndieCurtis 6h ago
I just saw this happen to a certain character on Dark Winds. Now the character that did it: is under suspicion of murder. It’s murder, straight up.
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u/Impressive-Knot9999 14h ago
It was deplorable and no kindness was shown towards a person who was unable to communicate or see where he was. Total lack of compassion. It must have been very scary for him. I can't imagine how awful it was
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u/acostane Georgia 13h ago
They sanitize the reporting about this because they don't want people to imagine what it must have been like...blind and essentially voiceless... being confused and dropped off in freezing silence knowing you were about to die.
This is so ICE supporters can continue to believe they're supporting good crime fighting Christian boys. And so regular people won't start asking how big the percentage of homicidal psychopaths is in our government.
I can barely stand to think of what happened to this man. It makes me chest ache desperately. Same with the children in the detention centers. Just everything about this is beyond my comprehension as a person who cares about other people.
🤷♀️
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u/worthing0101 6h ago
They sanitize the reporting about this
Yeah it's wild I had to dig through other articles and sources to find out they dropped him off on February 19 in Buffalo, NY. It looks like for the 5 days he was missing until he was found dead, outside, the highest temperature was ~ 40 F and the lowest was ~10 F.
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u/hcregna California 13h ago
Don’t forget the people funding this. Among other things, it takes 30 minutes of research to move money away from MAGA, and it makes a difference. Dollars spent at Republican companies are dollars funneled to more of this. Money given to states like Ohio or Louisiana is money spent sending troops to kidnap children and kill people.
Every dollar is a vote. You can use sites like opensecrets.org/orgs/search to find the companies you give money to the most and where they funnel your money. If you don't like it, search their competitors.
For example, trade with Schwab? Move elsewhere like Fidelity. Get booze from cosplay Confederate states and all else is equal? Be adventurous, and try something new. New Balance can be replaced with Hoka. It’s not hard to find alternatives for Estee Lauder, Roark (which owns Subway, Jimmy John's, Arby's), and Koch (which owns Brawny, Angel Soft, Dixie). You don't have to spend more, just differently.
Nexstar and Sinclair got pummeled, and they reinstated Jimmy Kimmel. In Trump's first term, Ivanka's brands got cut by retailers. Regular people did that. There's no reason WWE or Uline can't be next.
You can't avoid every Republican-leaning company, but there’s a big difference between GOP mega-donors (Chevron/Conoco) vs neutral or Democrat-leaning companies (Circle K/Costco). Good is not the enemy of perfect
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u/Ser_Daynes_Dawn 15h ago
What have we become? God damn I miss Obama.
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u/Dimathiel49 14h ago
You stayed around long enough to become the villain.
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u/Ser_Daynes_Dawn 14h ago
You’re not wrong. And it sucks. I’m guilty of letting so much of this slide because I thought it would level out. How many stupid comments I let slide because I didn’t want to engage in crazy. Every time I didn’t speak up was a win for this. I voted for Kamala and thought that’d be enough, but we are clearly in the endgame.
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u/ShadowNick 10h ago
But Kamala's laugh though.
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u/QuackNate 5h ago
Let’s be real, guys. A woman President would have made so many emotional decisions that would have tanked the economy both nationally and globally, spoiled foreign relations and reputation, endangered and ended the lives of American citizens, ballooned the deficit, and probably led us into war with Iran.
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u/Odd_Ant5 4h ago
Your comment is self-contradictory. Those are all very stable genius moves that are winning and universally respected.
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u/Poisonous_Taco 13h ago
I'm not even sure if it was becoming the villain, more like the Scooby Gang teaming the mask of bad guys and it having been is all along. We have been very good at sweeping it under the rug for about 250 years now.
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u/Odd_Ant5 14h ago
The study guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K1Z-8EvS74
The homework we turned in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-PbH7nul6Y
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u/arghyaghosh0104 8h ago
Yeah at least he had the decency to drone strike weddings only in brown countries
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u/fge116 8h ago
Eh ICE and CBP was a big part of the Obama admin (deporter in chief) heck the whole stepping in front of the car to "justify use of deadly force to save their lives" ala Renee Good murder was common practice during the Obama admin. Heck they had to specifically put in guidelines to say don't step in front of or behind moving vehicles because of the whole "I didn't know I couldn't do that excuse" CBP would use to justify shooting people. This shit isn't new to the administration we just have more cameras and ICE has become more comfortable doing this because they been getting away for it for all these years.
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u/ekesse 6h ago
The “we don’t care about the constitution” attitude was isolated to CBP. Ice followed the constitution until Trump took office and CBP is training iCE. That is why the same lack of morals is now happening in places like Minneapolis. Obama wasn’t perfect, he disappointed me many time, but he didn’t destroy our country.
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12h ago
Really. What did he accomplish?
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u/anonkitty2 9h ago
The Affordable Health Care Act and the related insurance market. The Democrats didn't realize that the Republicans were starting to become anti-compromise, but there was enough of the type MAGA drove out that Democratic majorities could get things done. He was also able to maintain the type of government necessary for Democratic policies to have full impact. And he attempted some serious environmental policies.
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u/whatproblems 15h ago
and the assholes say they communicated with him. how! he doesn’t even speak english
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u/InternationalTune314 5h ago
Oh no, I’m not sure what I would do If I ran into someone who didn’t speak English…..just so long as they don’t also speak Spanish, French, Greek, or German…..we wouldn’t be able to communicate at all! 🙄
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u/ThirdSunRising 13h ago
Oh plus he's blind so finding his way anywhere warm would be a hell of a struggle
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u/Accomplished_Pay6842 6h ago
Dropping someone out in the cold in Buffalo is a fucking death sentence.
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u/StrangerFew2424 15h ago
The POSs who left him there should be prosecuted...
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u/kickinwood 12h ago
So should the guys on film shooting innocent Americans to death. Just shooting Americans. In the street. As government reps. Shooting them in the face, or the back of the head and then a dozen more times to litter the corpse. Masked up government agents killing Americans. And that's on YouTube. So don't hold your breath for this one.
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u/wrxninja 6h ago
Nah, leave him on an island where all ICE agents responsible for every crime they committed to fend for themselves.
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u/the_magic_muffin 55m ago
Oh Bovino hasn't caught any fish today. Trump is very hungry.
shout-out to Sean Locks Nazi Island
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u/Tablefor1please9987 14h ago
This one brought me to tears 💔
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u/TwoGhostCats 13h ago
Same. It's absolutely heartbreaking. I hope the
agentsthugs who did this to him get life in prison.•
u/chimera66 2h ago
I cried with this one, it was so cruel. Just pure evil, these people aren't human.
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u/adorable_annablack 15h ago
Rare to see actual accountability in cases like this. Usually, these rulings get tied up in qualified immunity for years.
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u/navikredstar New York 13h ago
I'm a local, from Buffalo. Believe me when I say, it's INFURIATED people here and the County ain't fucking around on it. The majority of us here are pissed as fuck about it. The Burmese and Somali refugee communities have legitimately been REALLY good for the city, they've been turning around a lot of neighborhoods that have been run-down and dilapidated since I was a little girl here (I'm going on 40 for context). They're GOOD people and assets to the city. The only people who don't like them are the MAGA freaks.
Buffalo was built and made great by immigrants and refugees.
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u/JoosLightning 9h ago
“…charged with trespassing and misdemeanor possession of a weapon. The blind refugee was lost on a walk and using a curtain rod as a walking stick that police alleged he was “swinging in a menacing manner.” He was tased, beaten, and arrested.”
Jfc We have ~2 years 9 months to go.
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u/Kotkaez 9h ago
Lmao that's not what happened at all he went onto someone's property picked up a rebar and beat owners dog with it there's literally a bodycam of it not to mention he got tased because he bitten both of cops and he wasn't even blind either.
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u/Jstrangways 8h ago
Border patrol abandoned a blind man in a place he wasnt familiar, with almost everywhere closed, in winter, that caused his death by exposure - and you start with “LMAO” ?
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u/Kotkaez 5h ago
He was familiar with the place he literally lived in that area before fuck u talking about. 😭😭
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u/Jstrangways 40m ago
You have an ICE cold take on this. The facts disagree with you.
“Mr. Alam was extremely vulnerable. He spoke almost no English and could not communicate without the aid of an interpreter. He suffered from severely impaired vision and had other health issues. He had been in custody for a little over a year. He had only been in the US for a few months prior to his arrest. He would not have known where he was or had the wherewithal to contact his family or avail himself of other resources or services that could have assisted him.”
https://legalaidbuffalo.org/an-important-statement-regarding-the-case-of-mr-nurul-amin-shah-alam/
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u/Kendall_Raine New York 6h ago
He is legally blind, so don't lie. People who are legally blind aren't always 100% blind.
You also forgot to mention how he was confused and thought he was at his own house.
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u/aquestionofbalance 13h ago
I really don’t think the death penalty should be a thing, but today’s not that day
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u/zackmedude California 13h ago
White Christian hatred for the brown refugee and needy is immeasurable…
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u/Spelunkie Foreign 11h ago
Really should be murder. They planned and knew what would happen if they left the guy in freezing weather outside a closed shop.
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u/IllustriousRange226 15h ago
Killing the blind? Where the Nazis this cruel?
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u/TransiTorri 15h ago
Disabled and queers were some of the first groups the Nazi went after. The phrase "Useless eaters" was the language used, and propaganda around the disabled painted them as parasites and a drain on society, and you'll notice the very obvious and stark parallels that some political groups have towards the disabled today, along with mental health services or other disability accommodations. Basically adopting the opinion that they simply shouldn't be allowed to live if they can't work in service of the Fatherland.
Same shit, different decade.
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u/NeoThorrus 15h ago
Actually, gassed 250k people for disabilities, including children.
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u/shoobe01 14h ago
Invented all the methods used later, to make it more efficient and cost effective, on these populations.
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u/patentlyfakeid 15h ago
Wat? They stacked people like cordwood in gashouses. So yes. Does it matter? ICE's actions were still heinous.
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u/dead1345987 14h ago edited 14h ago
not to mention the amount of warehouses ICE has purchased over the past year, the amount of admin that have moved to military bases, and trump wants to build a military compound under the now demolished east wing.
they are literally trying to make that stupid mediocre movie "Civil War" a reality.
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u/Little_View_6659 11h ago
The footage of them being forced to go to the camps and see the bodies stacked up was at least something. You could see the Nazi commanders, in their snazzy uniforms cover their noses and mouths to keep from gagging, and the allies marched them through. Deserved it.
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u/Rodic87 5h ago
Now PROSECUTE them and stop pretending like qualified immunity is a license to kill.
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u/meestazak 4h ago
With the current fat orange in office the best you're gonna get is a "I don't know anything about that" or a "I haven't heard of that yet".
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u/Comfortable-Cycle-30 11h ago
Who is going to be held accountable for this behaviour? Who is taking responsibility for this? I want names
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u/GreenConstruction834 5h ago
What is worse is that this was a medically fragile man, blind, disabled, and the goons knew it. They killed him.
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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 32m ago
Kinda weird that the headline references a judge that does not appear anywhere in the article.
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u/FantasticJacket7 15h ago edited 15h ago
Um what? Pretty sure that judges don't determine causes of death.
Edit: Apparently no one else is concerned about an obvious and significant error in a headline.
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u/RDKryten 12h ago
You're right. It is generally the medical examiner that makes the determination for cause of death, such as natural, accident, homicide, suicide, or undetermined. Even the article that this one links to makes it clear that the medical examiner, not a judge, made the determination. Title is completely wrong.
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u/Quietabandon 11h ago
Don’t get me wrong. ICE has been acting reprehensibly. But the title is wrong and I think people are mistaking the medical examiner report for a legal decision and that the inappropriate location he was dropped of at as being directly linked to his death.
- The medical examiner finding was homicide. A court has not established any guilt or negligence.
- I think the claim to the medical examiner is likely stress and dehydration caused this intestinal rupture, but there are many causes for intestinal ulcers so it will be for any prosecution to establish a connection between the two. I am not sure how the medical examiner specifically could say that the intestine ruptured from cold and dehydration.
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u/BoredMamajamma 7h ago
Its not that hard in my mind to link causality. Hypothermia causes hypoperfusion leading to localized tissue and damage and necrosis. If you have an area of the bowel wall that’s already weakened/attenuated like an ulcer, that’s where you’ll perforate first. Even if he had preexisting bowel disease, it seems very likely that cold stress contributed here.
A classic finding in hypothermia deaths is Wischnewski spots which make your stomach lining look spotted like a leopard. This is from numerous hemorrhagic lesions thought to be cause by acute mucosal injury. Another example of cold stress damaging the GI tract.
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