Malik Muhammad Vanishes After Oregon Transfer to South Carolina

An Oregon inmate tracker showed nothing after activist Malik Muhammad—an Army veteran and the longest-sentenced 2020 BLM protester—was transferred to a “confidential location” and later to Kirkland Correctional Institute in South Carolina, leaving friends, fam

For weeks in March and early April, Malik Muhammad’s world shrank to unanswered calls and empty screens.

Muhammad’s lawyer, Lauren Regan, said their standing attorney call was canceled without explanation. When Regan checked the Oregon Inmate Tracker, she found no record of Muhammad—no update, no clear transfer notice. Friends and supporters described a frantic scramble to reach anyone who might know where he had gone.

“We were calling everyone,” said Christopher Kuttruff, a close friend and supporter. “We were terrified that they were in the hospital or dead …your mind obviously goes to the worst places.”

Muhammad, an Army veteran and activist, was serving the longest federal sentence of any 2020 Black Lives Matter protester. Several friends and supporters said that while incarcerated in Oregon state prison, he became a target because of his outspoken political beliefs and organizing efforts.

By early April. supporters said the best they could determine was that Muhammad had been transferred to a “confidential location.” Late that month. Muhammad was able to send a letter to his partner from Kirkland Correctional Institute in South Carolina—an intake facility roughly 3. 000 thousand miles from Oregon. as Regan put it. “as far away from me as possible.”.

In the letter, Muhammad described conditions at Kirkland as deplorable. He claimed incarcerated people are denied access to enough water, food, and recreation, and that they are forced to sleep on mats on the floor that sometimes get confiscated as punishment.

His family’s fear didn’t stop at the transfer. They say even now, reaching Muhammad is unreliable, with proof of life coming only through occasional letters or calls to the limited people approved to contact him.

The South Carolina Department of Corrections had little to say. In mid-May, the state’s prison system told The Intercept it had no record of someone named Malik Muhammad in its custody, and the prison system did not respond to a follow-up query in June.

Regan said she also hit an immediate legal wall after the move. Because she is not licensed in South Carolina. she said she has “not been able to speak on the phone or in person in an attorney-client privileged manner since their transfer. ” seriously impairing her ability to represent her client. She had to hire a local attorney to speak with him in person and collect potential evidence.

Prisons. Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative said. can function like a “black box. ” where people can disappear into solitary confinement or be transferred without family knowledge. “There’s so many constant questions that you live with as the loved one of an incarcerated person. and then when that person suddenly disappears. it’s terrifying. ” Bertram said. She added that prisons often don’t tell families when someone dies or is transferred to an outside hospital or needs emergency care.

The stakes of missing people are not theoretical. The article notes that in New Mexico. Stephen Slevin spent nearly two years in solitary confinement in county jail after county officials appeared to forget about him after charging him with driving under the influence. Slevin. it was reported. never saw a judge or a lawyer and had to pull his own tooth due to consistent medical neglect.

Bertram said people getting lost in the prison system is “pretty common,” even when they haven’t moved as far away as Muhammad. “There’s never any effort made by prisons to tell incarcerated people’s families, ‘Hey, we’re moving this person,’” she said.

For Regan, the distance—and the secrecy around it—fits into a larger pattern of pressure on Muhammad for speaking out and building community.

“Not only is [Malik] intelligent,” Regan said. “but Malik is Black, Muslim, an anarchist, [and] a political activist, and they have targeted Malik as a result of all of those things.”

Muhammad was arrested in October 2020 and received the harshest sentence out of the hundreds of protesters hit with federal charges after the 2020 summer protests for racial justice. After tens of thousands were arrested in some of the largest mass arrests in history. many were released without charges or had cases dropped. but prosecutors pushed for severe sentences in some cases. elevating state or local infractions to the federal level on an argument that rioters were masquerading as protesters.

In Muhammad’s case, he pleaded guilty to both state and federal charges, including two counts of “unlawful possession of a destructive device,” for throwing a Molotov cocktail during a protest in East Portland. In 2022, then-25-year-old Muhammad was sentenced to 10 years in state prison.

The plea agreement stated that he would serve his time in Oregon state prison near his supporters and community. Regan says Oregon has reneged on that agreement by transferring him interstate “as retaliation” for his activism while incarcerated—an effort, she argues, to punish him for organizing.

“Normally, they would have been sentenced to the federal prison system,” Regan said. “However, because their friends and family and supporters at the time were based in Oregon, they explicitly negotiated an outcome that ensured that they would remain in Oregon.”

Regan said federal prisons tend to be “better. ” in part because they often have more funding. allow for more freedom of movement. and have marginally better food. “Put it this way. she said. “generally speaking. if you had a choice between Oregon State Prison or Federal Prison. most people would choose [federal].” But Muhammad. she said. chose community—and was supposed to remain close to it.

Prison Policy Initiative’s Bertram also pointed to the procedural gaps that can deepen fear when people vanish: she said prisons have a habit of not telling families when transfers or emergency medical decisions happen.

Regan said there are “a number of reasons” to characterize Muhammad’s transfer as retaliatory. She cited a 2024 report that Muhammad had been effectively held in solitary confinement—called “special housing” in Oregon—for more than 250 days. despite Oregon limiting the use of this type of confinement to 90 days.

Regan said Muhammad’s fellow incarcerated people. many of whom she said had been through excessive solitary. could become potential plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit her organization is seeking to file against the state prison system. “The prison is. of course. retaliating against them for basically assisting a nonprofit legal organization in bringing a giant lawsuit about the abuses of solitary confinement in the Oregon prison system. ” Regan said.

Oregon rejects that claim. An Oregon Department of Corrections communications manager. Amber Campbell. wrote in a statement to The Intercept that Oregon has “flatly” denied sending Muhammad to South Carolina as retaliation. saying that such decisions are not made lightly and require a thorough review process by all parties. Campbell said that in Muhammad’s case. there is “extensive background for the reasons [they were] a candidate for an Interstate Compact.”.

Even as the dispute over intent continues, the human toll is immediate and ongoing. Friends described Muhammad as “empathetic,” “generous,” and “passionate,” and said he was eager to sing for his cellmates as much as he was to share a book on political theory.

Now his friends and family say they are left waiting—again—hoping that the system does not lose him a second time.

Malik Muhammad Oregon Department of Corrections Kirkland Correctional Institute South Carolina Department of Corrections prison transfer inmate tracker attorney-client privilege solitary confinement special housing interstate compact Black Lives Matter protester Civil Liberties Defense Center Prison Policy Initiative Lauren Regan Amber Campbell