Executive Clemency for Jeff Fort: Free Fort!

President Trump, 

I write to strongly urge you to grant executive clemency to Jeff Fort. 

Mr. Fort was born on February 20, 1947, in Aberdeen, Mississippi, and is currently incarcerated at USP Florence ADMAX. He is nearly 80 years old and has been in continuous federal custody since December 16, 1983. He has been held at ADX Florence since 2006, where he has spent nearly two decades in extreme solitary confinement. He is an elderly man, a father, a grandfather, and a person of deep religious faith. He should not be left to die in a concrete cell. 

Mr. Fort’s story is the story of America’s unfinished reckoning with racial terror, poverty, surveillance, and punishment. As a child, he and his family were directly terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan in Aberdeen, Mississippi, and forced from their land at gunpoint. His family worked cotton fields on a plantation, endured very harsh treatment, and later joined the Great Migration to Chicago when Mr. Fort was about twelve years old. He became one of Chicago’s Native Sons: a young Black man shaped by the South Side, by segregation, by poverty, and by the need to protect and organize his community. 

Mr. Fort holds a dynamic past: one marked by struggle, leadership, survival, service, transformation, and work for peace. He formed the Grassroots Independent Voters of Illinois, secured a $1 million federal grant for skills development programs, worked with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to advocate for poverty eradication and jobs equity in Chicago, and forged a historic alliance and friendship with Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. He also built relationships with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sammy Davis Jr., Ray Charles, and Bobby Rush. Even from prison, when Congressman Bobby Rush asked him about solutions to Chicago violence, Mr. Fort spoke of respect for life, order, discipline, family responsibility, and restored authority. 

The federal government did not simply watch Mr. Fort. It targeted him. FBI COINTELPRO tactics included fake letters designed to incite conflict between the Black Panthers and the P Stones, but Mr. Fort chose not to retaliate and instead arranged a meeting with Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. FBI records described an anonymous letter sent to Mr. Fort falsely suggesting the Panthers were planning a “hit” against him, and an internal memorandum stated that the goal was to “occasion Fort to take retaliatory action.” The government tried to manufacture violence. Mr. Fort chose a meeting instead. 

Mr. Fort has now served more than four decades in prison. He has spent nearly two decades in extreme solitary confinement. Despite those conditions, he has maintained a near spotless disciplinary record, completed over 100 educational courses, and been housed in ADX’s honor unit for well-behaved prisoners. The Bureau of Prisons’ own risk tool classifies him as low risk for general recidivism, supported by 146 completed programs, two work programs, and 59 months without a serious incident report. 

He is also seriously ill. Dr. Barbara Zeller concluded that Mr. Fort is an elder with hypertension, high lipids, diabetes mellitus type 2, near-syncope, a documented loss of consciousness with a fall, and ineffectively treated sleep apnea, and that these conditions “pose a danger to his life.” On October 19, 2025, he was found unresponsive, lying face down on the floor of his cell, fully unconscious for two minutes and then stuporous for forty minutes. At 79 years old, each episode brings greater risk of permanent disability or death. 

This is not what the sentencing judge intended. Judge Charles Norgle said: “The purpose of this sentence is not to place you in a federal prison for the rest of your life, but only in a federal prison until such time as maturity, wisdom, and the passage of time render you harmless to yourself and society.” That time has come. The maturity, wisdom, and passage of time Judge Norgle spoke of are now present. 

The human rights concerns are impossible to ignore. The human rights petition concerning ADX describes affected prisoners as held in indefinite solitary confinement with no meaningful human contact, exercise, access to natural light, or fresh air, and states that these conditions are tantamount to cruel and unusual treatment and punishment and may constitute torture. The petition concludes that prolonged, indefinite solitary confinement is a serious human rights violation and that affected prisoners suffer cruel, infamous, or unusual treatment and torture with no recourse through established mechanisms. 

President Trump, you have the power to end this. 

Jeff Fort is nearly 80 years old. He is gravely ill. He has served more than forty years. He has endured almost twenty years in extreme solitary confinement. He has grown old behind walls, away from his children and grandchildren. He has shown discipline, faith, study, and transformation. 

Will you allow Chicago’s Native Son to die in ADMAX, or will you act with mercy? 

Please grant Jeff Fort executive clemency. 

The whole world is watching. 

#FreeFort