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 repeated it again and again as the hours crawled by. Each officer who passed my cell offered the same hollow reply: “We’re on it.” But 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. I was left to rot.
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 took it upon himself to act. In twenty minutes, he had the inhaler in hand. That small mercy arrived too late to erase the fact that I had been treated as if my existence, my health, and my very breath were optional.
The neglect didn’t stop there. My anxiety attacks have only intensified. I’ve submitted multiple medical-request forms for chest pain, for vomiting, and for hyperventilation—forms that gathered ink and dust while no one came to see me. Requests that should have prompted care were met with silence. In this place, it sometimes feels as if basic humanity is discretionary.
Let me be clear: I am not asking for special treatment. I am asking to be treated as a person — with attention, with dignity, and with the care any human being deserves when they are in distress. What I have experienced instead looks less like institutional safety and more like a system that has allowed indifference to become policy.
Since arriving in the SHU, I’ve been stripped of almost everything that helped me weather this difficult chapter. Phone calls with loved ones have been cut off. Emails to family and friends have been blocked. Visits — the rare, sacred windows when a person can feel human again — have been taken away, twice a month and on holidays, as if punishment were the same as protection. They tell me all of this is “for my own safety.” Well, if this place is safety, then hell must be paradise.
I sometimes feel the life leaving my body, a slow leaking of hope. I won’t pretend otherwise. But I am not finished fighting. God willing, I will make it through this. And make no mistake: those who permitted, enabled, or ignored this neglect will be held accountable. Call it what you will — justice, oversight, a storm of accountability — it will come. I promise this not as a threat but as a vow: I will fight tooth and nail until those responsible answer for their neglect.
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 that decency move now.
This is more than a personal grievance. It is a warning to a system that has grown 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 a notice: the storm is coming to their doorsteps. It will not be loud for the sake of noise, 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, God willing, will keep speaking until justice answers.