Society
/
November 24, 2025
Trump officials are retaliating by imposing the harshest conditions in the entire federal prison system—including near total isolation.
(Verónica Martinez)
Inside the federal supermax tucked away in Colorado’s high desert, prisoners spend 22 to 24 hours a day locked alone inside concrete cells that are smaller than a standard parking space. The prison, formally called United States Penitentiary Florence Administrative Maximum Facility but better known as ADX, has earned the nickname “the Alcatraz of the Rockies” because of its harsh conditions.
Contact with others is extremely limited; programming, such as anger management or religious services, is broadcast over televisions in the cells, while psychological evaluations happen through the steel doors. Belongings are also strictly limited and prisoners aren’t allowed to hang photographs or drawings on their walls. Exercise time out the cell happens alone inside large cages called “dog runs,” where prisoners can only walk a few paces each direction. Prisoners are given virtual-reality goggles to simulate the outdoors or community. A former warden once called ADX a “clean version of hell,” and said that living there was “far much worse than death.” Olympic Park bomber Eric Robert Rudolph and mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, are incarcerated at ADX.
In February, Rejon Taylor learned he would be sent there.
As one of the 37 people on federal death row whose death sentence was commuted to life without the possibility of parole by then-President Joe Biden before he left office, Taylor had been anticipating a transfer away from the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, that houses the federal death chamber. He hadn’t considered he would be sent to ADX, which according to federal Bureau of Prison guidelines is reserved for people “who have demonstrated an inability to function in a less restrictive environment without being a threat to others.” Taylor by contrast had a clean disciplinary record and had earned a job as an orderly in Terre Haute, which gave him freedom to move around the unit during work. While he was allowed more than eight hours for phone calls every month, ADX would limit him to four 15-minute phone calls a month.
“At ADX I see myself being locked in my cell virtually all day,” he told me. “When I’m not in my cell, I see myself alone at rec. I picture myself cut off from the outside world.”
Biden’s decision to grant Taylor and his fellow prisoners clemency left only three people on federal death row and effectively blocked Trump from repeating the unprecedented spree of executions he oversaw during his first term. Trump denounced the move in a Christmas Day post on his social media platform, Truth Social, telling the prisoners to “GO TO HELL!”
Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office that called for an expansion of the death penalty and maligned officials who have been critical of capital punishment. The order directed the attorney general to review the placement of all 37 people whose death sentences were commuted by Biden and to “ensure that these offenders are imprisoned consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
In early February, the day US Attorney General Pam Bondi was sworn in, she ordered her staff to follow through on Trump’s order and evaluate the placement of Biden’s clemency recipients.
Lawyers for a group of the 21 out of the 37 prisoners filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration in April, alleging that it engaged in a “sham process” to imprison Biden’s clemency recipients “in the most oppressive conditions in the entire federal prison system.” They argue that the government violated prisoners’ due process rights and their protections against cruel and unusual punishment because the prison is unequipped to handle their medical and mental health problems and will exacerbate their conditions. The lawyers have said that Trump’s plan is vindictive and “serves no legitimate penological purpose.”
Eight prisoners who are not part of the lawsuit were already moved to ADX in late September. A judge has yet to rule on a temporary restraining order that would block the transfer of Taylor and the remaining prisoners who could still be moved to the federal supermax any day.
While the restrictions pale in comparison to ADX, Taylor still lives in a form of solitary confinement on federal death row in Terre Haute. At least there he’s been afforded some privileges and is able to leave his cell and interact with other people every day. After Biden commuted his death sentence, Taylor figured that officials would first transfer him to a high security penitentiary in Florida, where he planned on applying for a spot in a restorative justice program back in the general population at Terre Haute. With fewer restrictions than on federal death row, he was looking forward to finally hugging his family members again after 17 years; however, at ADX, his visits would continue to be non-contact, and happen through thick glass.
Now, with the prospect of being put in an even deeper form of isolation, Taylor says he wishes he was never granted clemency to begin with.
“Some men here are grateful that they are alive, that they no longer have the threat of execution looming before them, and so they feel like the worst is behind them,” he told me. “Then there are some like me, who feel that death feels closer after clemency, that the worst is ahead of us, at ADX, where we will exist in conditions of monstrosity, in a living hell.”
To decide where prisoners should be placed, BOP staff undergo a process that’s enshrined in federal law that stipulates that people should be placed within 500 miles of their home, dependent on factors such as bed availability, medical and mental health needs, or programming requirements. Prisoners are placed into one of five levels of security threats, ranging from minimum to administrative, using a database that calculates criteria such as their age, criminal history, and history of violence or escape attempts.
On January 7, lawyers representing the prisoners who were leaving death row met with a BOP attorney about how the bureau would determine where to place their clients following their commutations. The attorney told them that each prisoner would be considered individually, and invited their counsel to submit information to assist in the process, such as the location of family members they might be placed closed to, according to Gerald King, a federal public defender who wrote an affidavit recounting the meeting as part of the ongoing lawsuit.
King said that he met again with the lawyer a week later and was told that his client, Richard Tipton, would be transferred to a high security penitentiary. If he did well, he would then be moved to a medium security facility. King said he followed up with an e-mail to the lawyer asking that Tipton be transferred closer to his family in New York.
Then after Trump issued his executive order on January 20, the BOP lawyer told King that they were in a “holding pattern” because of it, according to King’s affidavit.
On February 18, the BOP lawyer told King that his client would be transferred to ADX. Tipon had received a notice stating that he was being moved there because he posed a risk to others and couldn’t safely be housed elsewhere.
The BOP has a special process for confining prisoners to ADX that includes a hearing. When Tipton had his hearing on April 7, he learned within hours that he was approved for ADX.
In an e-mail to me, Taylor described the hearing he attended virtually via Webex that same day about his referral to ADX. He said the hearing administrator asked if he was suicidal, to which he replied that he was not. When the administrator asked if he would be suicidal if moved to ADX, Taylor said he replied, “I don’t know, but what I do know is this: If I were placed at ADX, and my communications with the outside world were restricted, it would adversely impact me. My connection to the outside world is my lifeline, my source of strength, my motivation for survival.”
They proceeded to talk about his family, and Taylor told him that he wanted to give back his commutation. Two hours later, he said he received his recommendation for ADX. To further justify the move, the BOP had assigned Taylor and some prisoners to the security threat group—denoting a group, gang, or organization promoting violence, escape, drug, or terrorist activity—of “Death Row Inmate,” even though they were no longer on death row.
The recommendations gave the same reasons for sending most of the prisoners to ADX, regardless of whether they had clean disciplinary records, medical or mental health needs, or had participated in extensive programming. In most cases, these determinations were received by prisoners within hours of their hearing.
Taylor said he reviewed hearing reports for several other prisoners, finding that they were riddled with inaccuracies. In one, the administrator appeared to have mixed up the testimony of two prisoners.
The assignments seemed to contradict BOP policy, which stipulates that prisoners must be considered for other high security prisons before being designated to ADX.
In April, after Taylor and other clemency recipients received notice that BOP officials had approved their placement at ADX, lawyers with the ACLU filed the lawsuit seeking to block their transfer.
Gary Mohr, who oversaw Ohio’s death row as director of the state’s corrections department and served as president of the American Correctional Association, told me that the Trump administration’s plan contradicts basic corrections policy—which,since the 1990s, he says has been to impose the “least restrictive environment necessary to maintain custody and security of the individual.”
“I don’t see, I can’t see a rational reason to move inmates that have been compliant in an environment to a more restrictive environment,” Mohr said. “That’s contrary to my correctional understanding of fundamental policy.”
Lawyers for the US Department of Justice have defended the move, saying that there was nothing wrong with the process Bondi engaged in to send the prisoners to ADX. In a September statement to Fox News following the transfer of the eight prisoners, Bondi said the move “will ensure that they spend the remainder of their lives in conditions consistent with the egregious crimes they committed.”
Ten of the prisoners whom officials want to transfer to ADX have serious mental health conditions that their lawyers say will be exacerbated by the nearly total isolation of the conditions there. Some have already made numerous suicide attempts.
Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has visited ADX and conducted research on solitary confinement for decades, wrote in a declaration as part of the prisoners’ lawsuit that “mentally ill people are more likely to deteriorate and decompensate when they are subjected to the harshness and stress of prison isolation.”
Current Issue
The harm is so pronounced that in 2012 the American Psychiatric Association issued guidance that, in most cases, prisoners with serious mental illness should not be subjected to solitary confinement for more than four weeks because they are especially vulnerable to the impact of prolonged isolation.
While BOP has said that ADX is equipped to handle prisoners with a higher need of care, lawyers representing the clemency recipients with serious mental illness argue that they will not receive appropriate treatment there.
As Biden’s clemency recipients brace for being sent to ADX, Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, said he thinks the courts will ultimately block the transfers. “You cannot select individuals for partial treatment,” he told me. “You cannot put a thumb on the treat-them-badly side of the scale because their sentences were commuted. That’s called retaliation and that’s unconstitutional.”
There is some precedent of courts intervening during reassignments of former death row prisoners to harsh conditions. After Connecticut abolished the death penalty in 2015, prisoners were confined to conditions worse than the general population’s, including limited recreation time and communication with others. The scheme was ultimately ruled unconstitutional following a lawsuit from one of the prisoners.
Taylor said that he’s grappling with anxiety stemming from the possibility of being confined in ADX’s harsh conditions. In an essay he wrote for Solitary Watch in September, he recounted the suicide attempt of a fellow prisoner who is also awaiting transfer. “We are men marked for retribution, targeted for extra-judicial punishment,” Taylor wrote. “A sense of doom hovers ahead as I anticipate being buried alive at ADX.”
Popular
“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →
Taylor has kept himself busy on death row by writing and making art. He also receives weekly visits and speaks on the phone almost daily. “My connection to the outside world is my lifeline,” he told me. “To sever my lifeline is to undermine my sanity, my stability, my sense of security. And I fear what that might do to me. I fear becoming a mere shell of my once social self. I fear that kind of social death. I fear I won’t make it out alive.”
Lauren Gill
Lauren Gill is a staff writer at Bolts. She previously worked as a reporter for The Appeal, Newsweek, and the Brooklyn Paper. Her reporting on the criminal legal system has also appeared in ProPublica, Rolling Stone, The Intercept, Slate, The Nation, and The Marshall Project, among others.