The campaign will highlight existing protections for transgender and gender-nonconforming New Yorkers.
To kick off Pride Month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York City Commission on Human Rights announced the launch of a public awareness campaign dedicated to the safety of transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
In partnership with the newly established Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs as well as the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene, the “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” campaign will highlight existing protections for trans and gender-nonconforming New Yorkers covered by the city’s Human Rights Law. Throughout June, informational graphics and banners designed by artist Dez Stavracos will be displayed on public transit, paper advertisements, and electric kiosks across the city, outlining the rights to which trans New Yorkers are already entitled.
Currently, the New York City Human Rights Law protects trans and gender non-conforming people’s right to be addressed by the correct name, be gendered correctly, express their gender freely, and use facilities such as restrooms, locker rooms, and saunas that correspond with their gender. The law also prohibits housing, employment, and public space discrimination based on someone’s gender identity or expression, as well as gender-based bias, harassment, and retaliation from law enforcement.
Original article by republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, was dropped miles from his home in Buffalo, New York by US Border Patrol agents after he was released from jail on February 19, 2026. His body was found on February 24. (Photo via missing person poster/Investigative Post)
“There must be a full investigation and real accountability from US Customs and Border Protection,” said one lawmaker.
The latest chapter in what one historian called “the ongoing horror story of American immigration enforcement” unfolded in Buffalo, New York this week after Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, was released from a county jail where he’d been held for a year.
As Buffalo-based outlet the Investigative Postreported Wednesday, the nearly blind man was found dead on Tuesday evening, five days after US Border Patrol agents who had picked him up from the jail dropped him off at a coffee shop. They neglected to inform his lawyer or family where he was, making it impossible for Shah Alam to find his way home in sub-freezing temperatures.
Shah Alam, who was blind in one eye and had partial, blurry vision in the other, had gotten lost one day in February 2025 and ended up on a woman’s porch with a curtain rod he used as a walking stick.
The woman called the police, who ordered Shah Alam to drop his “weapon”—the walking stick—and then Tasered, beat, and arrested him.
Shah Alam, who could not speak English and did not understand the police officers’ orders, was charged with assault, trespassing, and possession of a weapon and taken to Erie County Holding Center.
His family, which includes a wife and two sons, chose not to bail him out of the county jail. His arrest had come a month into President Donald Trump’s second term, and they feared US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would detain him if he was released and send him to a detention center out of state.
Benjamin Macaluso, an attorney with Legal Aid Bureau who was representing Shah Alam, told the Investigative Post that he had been released on bail last week after reaching a deal with the Erie County District Attorney’s office, agreeing to plead guilty to trespassing and possession of a weapon. The agreement allowed him to avoid detention by federal immigration agents even though authorities had previously placed an immigration detainer on Shah Alam.
Despite that, the Erie County Sheriff’s Office contacted US Border Patrol to pick Shah Alam up from the Holding Center. When the agents determined Shah Alam was not eligible for immigration detention, Border Patrol told the Investigative Post, they “offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept to a coffee shop.”
An agency spokesperson claimed the nearly blind man “showed no signs of distress, mobility issues, or disabilities requiring special assistance.”
Mohamad Faisal, one of Shah Alam’s two sons, toldAl Jazeera that his father was not able to read, write, or use electronic devices.
Macaluso told the Investigative Post that Shah Alam’s family spent days searching for him in the cold before his body was found. The lawyer also said he had expected Shah Alam to be taken to an ICE detention center in Batavia, New York to be released.
A spokesperson for City Hall in Buffalo told the Investigative Post that homicide detectives were “investigating the circumstances and timeframe of events leading up to his death, following his release from custody,” but said homicide and exposure to the elements had been ruled out as the cause of death by a medical examiner.
US Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) was among those who called for a “full investigation” into Border Patrol’s decision to leave Shah Alam miles from his home despite his disability.
I am disturbed by the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam in Buffalo. Leaving a nearly blind man who didn’t speak English stranded far from home without telling his family was a shocking breach of responsibility and basic humanity by federal enforcement. There must be a full…
Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan, a Democrat, accused US Customs and Border Protection, which oversees Border Patrol, of a “dereliction of duty” and said the agency’s treatment of Shah Alam was “inhumane.”
“US Customs and Border Protection must answer for how and why this happened,” said Ryan. “Buffalo is a city that welcomes refugees and believes government should protect human dignity, not endanger it. US Customs and Border Protection failed that basic standard.”
Chuck Park, a Democrat who is running for Congress in New York’s 6th District, said the New York for All Act, which would prohibit state and local law enforcement from collaborating with federal immigration agencies, would have prevented the sheriff’s office from calling Border Patrol upon Shah Alam’s release.
This blind refugee wasn't just "picked up" by Border Patrol before he died. The Erie County Sheriff honored an ICE detainer & handed him over.
This is exactly what "New York For All" would prevent.
Alexandre Burgos of the New York State Hate and Bias Prevention Unit invited community members to a gathering to demand accountability to Shah Alam’s death.
“We are coming together to demand accountability and transparency in the case of Nurul Amin Shah Alam,” reads a flyer for the event, scheduled for Thursday evening at 5:30 pm Eastern at Lafayette High School in Buffalo.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
An empty warehouse is seen in Chester, New York on February 8, 2026. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement proposes a facility at a warehouse roughly two hours from New York City, but many locals and officials have objected to the plan. (Photo by Matthew Hoen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours,” wrote talk show host Thom Hartmann recently. “History isn’t whispering its warning: It’s shouting.”
President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda has supercharged opposition in cities where he has deployed federal agents to conduct raids, and communities in states including New York and Missouri are already working to block the next step the Department of Homeland Security plans to take in its push for mass deportations: acquiring massive warehouses across the country to use as immigrant detention centers.
US immigration and Customs Enforcement documents that were provided to Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire—one of the states where ICE aims to acquire a building and retrofit it to house at least 1,000 people at a time—show that the administration plans to spend $38.3 billion on its mass detention plan.
It would buy 16 buildings across the country to use as “regional processing centers” that could hold 1,000-1,500 people. Another eight detention centers would hold as many as 10,000 people at a time, with the detainees awaiting deportation.
The Washington Postreported that a review of state budget data showed that the amount of money the White House intends to pour into the project over the next several months is larger than the total annual spending of 22 US states.
“Thirty-eight billion dollars,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.). “That’s what Trump is spending to turn warehouses into human holding facilities. Not on schools. Not on healthcare. Not on veterans. On warehousing humans.”
Moulton also condemned ICE’s claim that the new network of detention facilities will ensure the “safe and humane civil detention” of immigrants.
At least six people died in ICE detention centers in January, and one of the deaths, that of Geraldo Lunas Campos at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, was ruled a homicide.
Medical neglect and abusive treatment—including some that amounts to torture—has been reported at multiple facilities.
ICE has already spent more than $690 million purchasing at least eight warehouses in Maryland, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in recent weeks. Documents posted on Ayotte’s website show the agency is pursuing additional acquisitions in New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, and Georgia.
Communities are already rallying against the plan and questioning whether the small towns ICE has selected have sufficient water and sewer infrastructure to support thousands of people detained in a warehouse.
In New York, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) said last week that 25,000 people in his district have signed a petition opposing the use of a local warehouse to house immigrants and pointed to the “major corruption and graft” evident in the plan to purchase and run the warehouses.
“The site in my district that’s proposed is owned by one of Trump’s multibillionaire donors, who would directly financially benefit from this site,” said Ryan, referring to former Trump adviser Carl Icahn.
“I’m telling you, we are not going to let this happen in my district.”@PatRyanUC is pushing back on the Trump administration’s plan to buy warehouses across the country to turn them into mass detention centers, including one in his New York district. pic.twitter.com/KYOQb4WJx6
As Common Dreamsreported Friday, private prison firm GEO Group raked in a record $254 million in profits last year as it secured contracts with the Trump administration to build new ICE facilities across the US.
ICE has attempted to make purchases in Oklahoma City; Kansas City, Missouri; and in Virginia, but those plans have fallen through, with the Kansas City Council passing a five-year ban on new nonmunicipal detention centers after the public learned that DHS was the potential buyer of a warehouse in the city.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also joined his constituents in speaking out against ICE’s $100 million purchase of a warehouse in his state to house at least 1,000 people at a time.
“This administration is spitting in the face of communities from Minneapolis to Maryland and wasting our tax dollars. We won’t back down,” said Van Hollen late last month.
Trump's ICE just purchased a warehouse in MD for $100M to hold 1,000+ detainees.
Last week, I joined Marylanders demanding that ICE stay out.
This Admin is spitting in the face of communities from Minneapolis to Maryland & wasting our tax dollars.
The details of the administration’s planned conversion of warehouses were reported less than two weeks after Pablo Manríquez of Migrant Insiderrevealed that a US Navy contract originally valued at $10 billion “has ballooned to a staggering $55 billion ceiling to expedite President Donald Trump’s ‘mass deportation’ agenda” and to help build “a sprawling network of migrant detention centers across the US.”
At Common Dreams last week, talk show host and author Thom Hartmannwrote that the warehouses Trump plans to use to hold people—purchased by an agency whose own data shows it has largely been detaining people with no criminal records—are best described as concentration camps like those used in Nazi Germany.
“By the end of his first year, [Adolf] Hitler had around 50,000 people held in his roughly 70 concentration camps, facilities that were often improvised in factories, prisons, castles, and other buildings,” wrote Hartmann. “By comparison, today ICE is holding over 70,000 people in 225 concentration camps across America,” with hopes to “more than double both numbers in the coming months.”
“Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem. And that’s exactly what ICE is building now,” he continued. “History isn’t whispering its warning: It’s shouting.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
People participate in a protest and vigil after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, on January 7, 2026. Photo: Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via AP
Protests erupt across US after ICE agent shoots woman dead
CITIES across the United States continued to erupt in protest today after a woman was shot dead by a federal immigration officer.
Thousands of people took to the streets to vent their anger at Wednesday’s shooting of Renee Nicole Macklin Good, including in New York, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Phoenix, Tucson, Columbus and Minneapolis, where the shooting took place.
The killing of Ms Macklin Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent came during US President Donald Trump’s latest armed operation against the Somali community.
More than 1,500 people have been arrested during the raids carried out by around 2,000 ICE agents.
…
Eyewitness Emily Heller said officers had screamed at Ms Macklin Good to “move, move, move!”
But when she moved, an officer shot her multiple times.
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WARNING FROM HISTORY: Communists Robert Thompson and Benjamin Davis leave the Federal Courthouse in New York City during the 1949 ‘Foley Square Trial’ / Pic: CM Stieglitz/World Telegram & Sun/Library of Congress/CC
After Zohran Mamdani’s electoral win, BHABANI SHANKAR NAYAK points to the forgotten role of US communists in New York’s radical politics
AS THE dust of the recently concluded mayoral election settles in New York’s political consciousness, a new dawn begins.
Red babies are once again in the streets of Harlem, and it is now confirmed that 34-year-old Zohran Kwame Mamdani is the mayor-elect of New York City. Mamdani, a self-confessed socialist, is a member of both the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America.
His victory demonstrates that market-led bourgeois politics can be challenged and defeated by working people united around a clear, progressive political agenda.
New York is one of the richest cities in the world, yet one in four of its residents lives in poverty. The costs of housing, rent, childcare, transport, food and other essentials have become unaffordable for a dignified, basic life.
In this wealthy city, more than 500,000 children go to bed hungry each night. In response to such acute crisis, Mamdani offers politics of hope in the hopeless world of racialised capitalism in US.
Mamdani’s campaign promised to freeze rents, reduce the cost of childcare, double the minimum wage, provide free public transport and increase corporate tax rates. He also pledged to establish city-owned grocery stores, expand mental health services and promote community safety across New York.
These progressive policies are not radical enough for a total transformation but the policies are a necessary response to the times and essential for the survival and dignity of working people in New York.
People participate in a protest and vigil after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, on January 7, 2026. Photo: Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via AP
