The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has transferred eight former federal death row prisoners to its “supermax” facility in Colorado.
All eight were being held on death row at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, where all federal executions are carried out. They were among 37 prisoners whose death sentences former President Joe Biden reduced to life before leaving office.
Read more: Judge won't block transfer of Terre Haute prisoners
The decision angered incoming President Donald Trump, who issued a day-one executive order calling for harsher restrictions on those prisoners. Soon after, the U.S. prison bureau started assessing them for transfer to ADX.
The “Alcatraz of the Rockies” is the most secure prison in the federal system and houses a unit that severely restricts movement and communication. Opened in 1994, the facility is designed to hold those who have been assessed to be threats to national security or to other prisoners and prison employees.
Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued to stop the ADX transfer moves. A federal judge in Washington, D.C. declined to do so but warned the bureau against departing from usual procedures.
Joe Biden’s last-minute commutations of death row prisoners are a stain on our justice system and a betrayal of the families of victims. I was honored to host some of those families here at @TheJusticeDept in May.
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) September 25, 2025
We have begun transferring the monsters Biden commuted to…
Most of the eight men moved at ADX had been sentenced to death for murders inside prisons. They are Shannon Agofsky, Carlos Caro, Christopher Cramer, Joseph Ebron, Ricky Fackrell, Edward Fields, Edgar Garcia, and Mark Snarr.
They join other prisoners who've been sentenced to death in federal courts: Kaboni Savage, one of the 37 commutation recipients, is now serving a life sentence at ADX, where he has been held since sentencing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers who carried out the 2013 Boston marathon bombing, is also at ADX.
President Biden left Tsarnaev’s sentence in place along with those of Robert Bowers, the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, and Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who shot and killed Black worshipers at a church in Charleston in 2015.
Read more: Prisoners sue to stop transfer to federal 'supermax' facility
Agofsky, who received a federal death sentence for murdering his cellmate in a Texas prison in 2001, got the ADX recommendation after refusing to participate in an assessment in April, according to records obtained by WFIU/WTIU News.
“I declined. (Pointless.),” Agofsky wrote in a letter at the time, and he received the decision a few hours later.
“You are being referred for placement to the ADX-General Population based on your conviction and disruptive behavior while under the care, custody, and control of the Bureau of Prisons,” paperwork issued after the hearing said.
“Specifically, you were found guilty of committing multiple high, greatest and moderate severity inmate discipline offenses,” it said.
The violations are listed as killing, attempted killing, possessing a weapon, rioting, assault without serious injury, refusing to obey staff orders, failing to follow safety regulations, being unsanitary or untidy, and moderate disruptive conduct.
Agofsky acknowledged the list of infractions was accurate but said most of the incidents took place years or even decades earlier.
“A lot of the lesser ones, I can't even recall. But being unsanitary or untidy is from 1992,” he wrote. “The only thing somewhat recent is one of the assaults, from 2018. In my defense, I assaulted Dylann Roof. Since everyone wants to assault Dylann Roof, I should get a pass on that one! Ha.”
Agofsky wrote that his assessment was similar to others and that “none of it is anything that would normally be used in an ADX placement.”
Read more: Former death row prisoners heading to ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies’
That point was central to the ACLU’s lawsuit seeking to block the transfers of many of the prisoners. The plaintiffs argued that if any of the prisoners were truly dangerous enough to require placement at ADX, they could have been moved there before Trump took office. The lawsuit accused the administration of seeking to punish the prisoners collectively for a decision that they had no control over.
Agofsky had opposed Biden’s decision to commute his sentence and sued to stop it, arguing it would make it harder to challenge his conviction.
Listen: Biden commutes 37 death sentences
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t immediately return messages Friday but U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi pointed to Biden’s decision to grant clemency in a statement to Fox News.
"President Biden’s decision to commute the death sentences of these monsters showed abhorrent disregard for our justice system and total disrespect for victims’ families already suffering through immense loss," Bondi was quoted as saying.
She also noted the decision followed a meeting with victims’ families at the justice department in Washington, D.C., earlier this spring.
Read more: Trump targets prisoners granted clemency by Biden
"After meeting with many of the victims’ families at the Department of Justice and promising to take action on their behalf, eight of these prisoners have been transferred to the Colorado super-max prison ADX. This will ensure that they spend the remainder of their lives in conditions consistent with the egregious crimes they committed," Bondi said, according to Fox News.
The report said Bondi hoped to send the rest of the 37 commutation recipients to ADX. It wasn’t clear why only eight were being sent now.
