As you know, last September the BOP changed its email system to make mass emailing of this newsletter impossible.
This is a copy of the newsletter for April 21, 2025. I have reformatted it to eliminate graphics so everything printed in black will fit into a Corrlinks email (if you are providing it to an inmate).
LISA Newsletter for April 21, 2025 – Is Trump’s Plan to Deport American Federal Prisons Legal?
LISA publishes a free newsletter sent to inmate subscribers in the Federal system. Due to BOP Corrlinks limitations, the newsletter must be sent in small batches throughout the week.
Edited by Thomas L Root, MA JD
Vol 11, No 16
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Illegal Immigrants Sent To El Salvador – Are American Prisoners Going Next?
SCOTUS Grants Cert on Two Criminal Law Cases
Reminder: Federal Tort Claims Can Be A Minefield
Bill Introduced Requiring BOP To Tell Your Family Promptly That You’re Dead
BOP Staff Fall Ill From Suspected Mailroom Drugs
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ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS SENT TO EL SALVADOR – ARE AMERICAN PRISONERS GOING NEXT?
While meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office last week, President Trump declared, “Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough. We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters.”
“Yeah, we’ve got space,” Bukele responded.
Administration officials chuckled in the background. “I’m talking about violent people,” Trump said a few minutes earlier. “I’m talking about really bad people.” Obviously, the only people he could send – the only people over whom he could obtain custody to deport – are federal prisoners.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is reportedly considering legal mechanisms that would let Trump send American citizens to El Salvador’s infamous CETMO prison.
“It is pretty obviously illegal and unconstitutional,” Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University Law School, told NBC News.
The law that gives the government authority to deport people does not apply to US citizens, Emma Winger, a lawyer at the American Immigration Council said last week.
“I can’t see how exiling someone is permissible as part of the bundle of rights that are fundamental to citizenship,” Anthony Kreis, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, told NBC. “doubly so if the effort to house American citizens overseas means turning a person over to a foreign authority.”
“The US government has already deported someone to this prison illegally and claimed no recourse to get them back, so the courts must shut down this unconstitutional train wreck before US citizens are unlawfully caught up in it,” David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, told NBC News.
Late Friday night, the Supreme Court issued an extraordinary order even as more immigrant detainees were being bussed to waiting aircraft for a flight to a Salvadorean prison, directing the Government in terse language “not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”
In other Administration news, 21 federal prisoners whose death sentences were commuted to life without parole by President Biden filed a lawsuit last Wednesday arguing that a Trump executive order that they be imprisoned in harsh conditions “consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose” violates the 8th Amendment.
In a complaint filed in US District Court for DC, the prisoners said that as a result of Trump’s order, “in defiance of the controlling statutes, regulations, and policies governing the BOP redesignation process,” Attorney General Pam Bondi “ordered BOP staff to engage in a new sham process that categorically predetermined that all Plaintiffs—regardless of what the statutory BOP redesignation process had determined—will be incarcerated indefinitely in the most oppressive conditions in the entire federal prison system…”
Reason, Homegrowns Are Next (Apr 15)
NBC News, ‘Obviously illegal’: Experts pan Trump’s plan to deport ‘homegrown criminals’ (Apr 14)
Washington Post, They were on federal death row. Now they may go to a supermax prison. (Apr 18)
Complaint (ECF 1), Taylor v. Trump, Case No. 1:25-cv-01161 (USDC District of Columbia, Apr 16)
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SCOTUS GRANTS CERT ON TWO CRIMINAL LAW CASES
The Supreme Court has granted review in two cases affecting federal defendant rights.
Under the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act, a defendant’s obligation to pay restitution ends 20 years after he or she gets out of prison. The prior law, the Victim and Witness Protection Act, cut off restitution repayment obligations 20 years after entry of judgment. Holsey Ellingburg served 20 years for bank robbery, but after he was released, his Probation Officer insisted he keep paying restitution even though his 20 years under the VWPA had passed.
The government violates the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause if (1) it applies a penal law retroactively, and (2) retroactive application of the law disadvantages the defendant by altering the definition of criminal conduct or increasing the punishment for the crime. The Probation Office argued that applying the MVRA’s longer payment period to Holsey’s restitution obligation didn’t violate the Ex Post Facto Clause because restitution is not punishment but instead is a civil remedy.
A Supreme Court holding that restitution is punitive rather than civil could have profound effects on everything from the burden the government faces proving how much a defendant owes to whether it can be attacked in a 2255 motion.
In the second case, state criminal defendant David Villareal was on trial and testifying in his own defense. Court ended for the day with Dave still on the stand, and the presiding judge gave the instruction that Dave was not to discuss his testimony with anyone overnight, even his own lawyer.
The Supreme Court granted review to determine whether such an instruction is an unconstitutional infringement of a defendant’s 6th Amendment right to counsel.
Ellingburg v US, Case No 23-3129 (cert granted Apr 7)
Villareal v Texas, Case No 24-557 (cert granted Apr 8)
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REMINDER: FEDERAL TORT CLAIMS CAN BE A MINEFIELD
After the Supreme Court pounded a stake through the heart of Bivens v Six Unnamed Known Agents as a means of collecting damages for Bureau of Prisons medical errors and omissions, the only way left to vindicate BOP medical misfeasance is a tort claim action.
You cannot bring a tort action against the government unless it meets the restrictions of the Federal Tort Claims Act, a statute that provides many ways for a pro se prisoner plaintiff to screw up.
I had a call last week from one such unfortunate. He had filed his administrative exhaustion (done on an SF-95 form, not a BP-9) and gotten the usual denial. He thought he was good to go with a lawsuit. But in his SF-95, he asked for $50,000 in damages. He was shocked to learn that his SF-95 claim for $50,000 had capped his lawsuit claim at that amount.
Two cases decided last week remind litigants of other pitfalls.
Although an FTCA action is brought under a federal statute, the laws that govern whether a BOP employee was negligent (in medical cases, whether he committed medical malpractice) are the laws of the state where the neglect happened. Most state medical malpractice statutes require that a malpractice claim be supported by an affidavit from a medical expert.
A former FCI Sandstone inmate sued, claiming that BOP health service employees had failed to properly treat him for injuries from a fall. The district court ruled that the plaintiff’s expert-disclosure affidavit required by Minnesota law was deficient and threw out the case.
Last week, the 8th Circuit agreed that the plaintiff’s affidavit “fail[ed] to satisfy the requirements of Minn. Stat. 145.682” by failing to reference the applicable standard of care, the appropriate amount of time, the proper standard of care, the preoperative standard of care, and the standard of care.
Of course, for most inmates filing FTCA actions without an attorney, access to state law materials – let alone the ability to pay for a medical expert witness – is just not going to happen.
In another case, an inmate brought a Bivens action against a BOP employee back in 2019 for sexual assault. The case was dismissed, but the prisoner appealed. Two years later, while the appeal was pending, he brought an FTCA suit with the same claim.
The district court dismissed the FTCA claim in 2022 for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, finding that the BOP employee was not acting within the scope of her employment (an FTCA requirement) at the time of the alleged assault.
Last week, the 4th Circuit dismissed his Bivens appeal as well. The FTCA contains a little-noticed “judgment bar” under 28 USC 2676 that prohibits claims arising from the same event after an FTCA judgment. The 2022 FTCA dismissal thus permanently blocked the plaintiff’s Bivens appeal.
Mancini v US, Case No 24-1464, 2025 USAppLEXIS 9190 (8th Cir. Apr 18, 2025)
Longworth v Mansukhani, Case No 21-7609, 2025 USAppLEXIS 9032 (4th Cir. Apr 16, 2025)
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BILL INTRODUCED REQUIRING BOP TO TELL YOUR FAMILY PROMPTLY THAT YOU’RE DEAD
Senators Jon Ossoff (D–GA) and John Kennedy (R–LA) have reintroduced legislation that would require the Dept of Justice to issue guidance to the BOP for promptly notifying families when prisoners who become seriously ill, suffer life-threatening injuries, or die.
“Too often, the families of those incarcerated never find out about a serious illness, a life-threatening injury, or even the death of a loved one behind bars,” Ossoff said in a press release.
The Senate bill has not yet been assigned a number. A companion House bill (HR 2718) has been introduced by Reps Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D–CA), John Rutherford (R–FL), Barry Moore (R–AL), and Glenn Ivey (D–MD).
Ossoff and others have introduced the same bill in prior Congresses since 2022, but these versions have bipartisan sponsorship.
The BOP stated that its policy is to notify next-of-kin when a prisoner dies. However, Reason has reported that families have “described delays in being notified that their incarcerated loved one had been hospitalized, or even died; having their phone calls ignored; not being allowed to see their loved one in their final moments; delays in being sent the body and death certificate; being given inaccurate or incomplete information about the manner of death; or waiting months and years for the Bureau to fulfill their public records requests for more information about how their loved one died.”
HR 2718, Family Notification of Death, Injury, or Illness in Custody Act of 2025
S —, Family Notification of Death, Injury, or Illness in Custody Act of 2025
Reason, Bill Would Require Federal Prisons to Notify Families of Serious Illness and Death (Apr 10)
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BOP STAFF FALL ILL FROM SUSPECTED MAILROOM DRUGS
BOP staff poisonings continue at an alarming pace.
Last week, 15 federal BOP employees at FCI Thomson were hospitalized after suspected exposure to illegal drugs in the prison mail room, requiring emergency Narcan administration. This incident followed a suspected exposure the prior week of 10 BOP staffers at FCC Victorville over just four days.
Kendall Bowles, president of AFGE Local 3969 (representing 650 BOP employees at Victorville), said in a press release, “The Bureau’s leadership continues to force us to process contaminated materials with inadequate protection, showing complete disregard for officer safety.”
Making matters worse, Bowles said, is what he claims is the BOP’s attempts to hide these incidents from union officials. “Under a controversial Executive Order carried over from the Trump Administration, they didn’t even notify me when staff were rushed to the hospital, and they failed to issue a press release. Their secrecy speaks volumes about their priorities.”
Compounding this crisis, according to Jon Zumkehr, President of AFGE Local 4070 (representing Thomson employees), is the recent White House executive order stripping BOP staff of collective bargaining rights. “This Executive Order is having a devastating impact on our officers,” Zumkehr said. “They feel completely unprotected, unsupported, and they’re watching their friends and colleagues being carried out of BOP facilities after being revived with Narcan. We need help.”
EIN Presswire, Fifteen Thomson Federal Prison Staff Member Exposed and Hospitalized (Apr 16)
WTTV, FCC Victorville Prison Law Enforcement Officers Hospitalized After Drug Exposure (Apr 13)
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