Sen. Mike Lee: Federal Prison Employee Ended Call on Inmate's Health Inquiry

# Sen. Mike Lee Encounters Resistance from Federal Prison Staff Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wrote in a social media post on Wednesday, April 15, 2026, that an employee at a federal prison hung up on him when he called to check on the health of an incarcerated man.

Lee called the prison on behalf of a constituent whose son was incarcerated and had not been heard from in several days. The son suffered from multiple, potentially life-threatening health conditions that are going untreated in prison. When Lee called the prison's main switchboard, a BOP employee scolded him for calling 'too fucking late' and refused to provide any information beyond claiming that the inmate was alive and receiving appropriate medical care.

When Lee persisted in asking for the employee's name, the staffer hung up. S. Bureau of Prisons on behalf of constituents with an incarcerated family member suffering from a severe medical condition.

Prior Incidents Highlight Communication Issues Kesha Jackson's husband, John Jackson, died at a low-security federal prison in Arkansas in 2019.

On the day John Jackson died, Kesha Jackson received a call from John's sister who said she needed to call the prison right away because something had happened and staff wouldn't tell the sister anything. Kesha Jackson did not get through when she called the prison that day, as the phone just rang and rang.

' A chaplain called Kesha Jackson several hours later to break the news of John Jackson's death.

Family Experiences with Prison Staff Responses In 2020, the daughters of a woman who died at a federal women's prison in Alabama had been calling for weeks to try and get help for their mother's deteriorating health, but the prison staffers were hanging up on them.

One of the daughters stated that the prison staffers laughed at their mother and told them she was too young to be having a heart attack. The father of one incarcerated woman stated that the BOP never informed him that his daughter had been in a coma for more than a week.

The father had been emailing every day, and all of a sudden the emails stopped, so he did not know what was going on for about a week.

Ten days later, the father received a letter from one of the people the daughter was incarcerated with that told him what happened.

Legislative Response to Notification Gaps Sens.

) introduced the Family Notification of Death, Injury, or Illness in Custody Act last year. The act would require the Justice Department to issue guidance to the BOP for promptly notifying families of individuals in custody who become seriously ill, suffer life-threatening injuries, or die.

“'Too often, the families of those incarcerated never find out about a serious illness, a life-threatening injury, or even the death of a loved one behind bars.'”