The men had their death sentences commuted under the Biden administration, but say they are being punished by being transferred from a prison in Indiana to a restrictive federal prison in Colorado.
A group of condemned prisoners whose lives were spared by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. are now suing the federal government, arguing that Trump administration officials are unfairly trying to transfer them to one of the country’s harshest federal prisons.
The 21 men who joined the lawsuit are among 37 prisoners who had their death sentences commuted by Mr. Biden in one of his last acts in office. They are currently being held at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where the federal government has long held death row prisoners and where Mr. Trump had 13 prisoners executed during his first term in office.
Now, they say, the Trump administration is carrying out a “sham process” to move them to the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo., often referred to as A.D.X. It is considered the most restrictive federal prison in the nation and the only federal “supermax” prison; experts and former prisoners have described being held there as living in nearly complete isolation.
The proposed transfer follows a series of events that began with Mr. Biden canceling the death sentences of all but three prisoners on federal death row in December, converting 37 of them to terms of life in prison. On Jan. 20, the day Mr. Trump began his second term, he issued an executive order urging his incoming attorney general to pursue the death penalty for offenses severe enough to warrant it and to encourage prosecutors across the country to do so as well.
Key to the prisoners’ new lawsuit, in January Mr. Trump also ordered his incoming attorney general to “evaluate the places of imprisonment” for those whose sentences were commuted by Mr. Biden and ensure that they are “imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
In February, a day after Pam Bondi was confirmed as attorney general, she issued a memo directing the Bureau of Prisons to evaluate where the prisoners Mr. Biden had commuted should be held.
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