In February, Nurul Amin Shah Alam — a 56-year-old, nearly blind Rohingya refugee living in Buffalo — died after federal immigration officers released him alone, in the cold, outside a closed coffee shop far from his community. He had ended up in federal immigration custody after a run-in with local law enforcement. He spoke no English. No one called his family. Days later, he was gone.

His death was not only a federal failure. It was the result of a pipeline — one that begins when local police share information with or hand people over to federal immigration authorities, often without any safeguard for the person in the middle.

The New York for All Act would break that pipeline. The bill, currently under negotiation in the state budget, would prohibit local and state law enforcement agencies in New York from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. It would mean that a confusing encounter with local police could no longer become a one-way door to immigration detention — and, in the worst cases, to death.

Buffalo Assemblyman Jonathan Rivera has seen the fear that Alam's death has spread across his district. Immigrant congregations are emptying. People are carpooling in groups just to get to work. Families who survived military violence and genocide are now afraid to leave their homes.

New York has long called itself a place of refuge. The New York for All Act is a chance to make that real — to draw a clear line between local policing and federal immigration enforcement, and to ensure that no family in this state has to go through what Alam's family is going through now.

We are calling on the New York State Legislature to pass the New York for All Act without delay, and on Governor Hochul to sign it into law.

Nurul Amin Shah Alam's community is watching. So is the rest of New York.