They put me in the Special Housing Unit at FCI Fairton and then treated me like I had become invisible.
On August 28, when I was told I was being moved to the SHU, the first thing out of my mouth was simple and urgent: “I need my inhaler.” An inhaler is not a luxury; it is life. I kept saying it as the hours crawled by. Each officer who passed my cell offered the same hollow reply: “We’re on it.” Words without action are cruelty dressed up as procedure. The anxiety tightened like a fist around my chest; breathing became a battle. Still, they ignored me.
By the morning of August 29 — thirty hours of terror and a night I will not forget — the warden and her deputy finally came by. I told them plainly about the inhaler and the panic I was experiencing. “I’m on it,” they said. Two hours later, while I was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, an officer who had heard my earlier pleas acted. In twenty minutes, he had the inhaler in hand. That mercy arrived too late to erase that I had been treated as if my existence, my health, and my very breath were optional.
The neglect didn’t stop. My anxiety attacks have intensified. I’ve submitted multiple medical-request forms for chest pain, vomiting, and hyperventilation—forms that gathered ink and dust while no one came. Requests that should have prompted care were met with silence. Here, basic humanity feels discretionary, given only when convenient.
I am not asking for special treatment. I am asking to be treated as a person — with attention, dignity, and the care any human deserves when in distress. What I have experienced looks less like institutional safety and more like a system that has allowed indifference to calcify into policy. Procedures matter only when they protect people; otherwise they become instruments of neglect.
Since arriving in the SHU, I’ve been stripped of almost everything that helped me weather this chapter. Phone calls with loved ones have been cut off. Emails to family have been blocked. Visits — rare, sacred windows when a person can feel human again — have been taken away, twice a month and on holidays, as if punishment were protection.
I sometimes feel the life leaving my body, a slow leaking of hope. I won’t pretend otherwise. But I am not finished fighting. I will make it through this. And make no mistake: those who permitted, enabled, or ignored this neglect will be held accountable. Call it justice, oversight, a storm of accountability — it will come. I promise this not as a threat but as a vow: I will fight until those responsible answer for their neglect. This neglect will not be tolerated.
And yes, I renew my plea to President Trump: intervene. Help me escape this daily torment and let me return to my family. I am a son, a sibling, a partner, a man whose life matters to those who love him. If there is any decency left in the offices that oversee places like FCI Fairton, let it move now.
This is more than a personal grievance. It is a warning to a system comfortable with saying the right words while ignoring the right action. When we allow people to be treated as less than human, we erode the foundation of what makes a nation decent. Accountability is not political theater; it is the lifeline of our institutions.
Let this op-ed serve as notice: the storm is coming to their doorsteps. It will not be loud for noise’s sake, but it will be relentless in pursuit of truth and responsibility. To the staff at FCI Fairton and to anyone who thinks they can silence a human being by denying him breath, visitors, and calls: know this — silence breeds resistance. Neglect breeds outrage. And I’ll keep speaking until justice answers.