The Communications Management Units (CMUs) at USP Marion, Illinois and FCI Terre Haute, Indiana — opened secretly by the Bureau of Prisons in 2006-2008 — confine federal prisoners under extreme communications restrictions: monitored, recorded, and limited in-language phone calls to family, no contact visits, mail screened by paragraph, and almost no group association.

Roughly two-thirds of CMU prisoners are Muslim. Disproportionate populations of Black, Indigenous, and political prisoners are held there. In 2010 the Center for Constitutional Rights filed Aref v. Holder challenging the constitutionality of the CMUs. The case forced the disclosure of internal BOP documents showing the units were created without notice-and-comment rulemaking and operated outside the BOP's own regulations.

We ask the Director of the BOP and the Attorney General to close both CMUs and return all prisoners currently held there to general population.