On Tuesday, November 3, 2026, the Bureau of Prisons announced that the minimum-security satellite camp next to FCI Thomson in northwest Illinois will no longer house people. According to WQAD, the camp held 156 people when the BOP made the announcement. The agency said it will use the camp buildings for staffing and administrative functions and that no jobs will be lost. Local reports from WQAD, KWQC, and QC Online said the BOP did not announce when the people at the camp will move or where they will go.
I do not know where the BOP will send those men, and I will not guess. I do know what a transfer feels like from the inside. A decision made in an office hundreds of miles away can change a person's job, classes, routine, and visiting schedule in a single day. The people at Thomson's camp did not ask for this move, yet each of them can still decide how to prepare for it.
Learn How the BOP Decides Where You Go
When a judge imposes a federal sentence, the Bureau of Prisons decides where the person serves it. Our lesson on transfers in prison explains that designators work from an office in Grand Prairie, Texas, and that they make decisions without meeting the people they move. A security score, bed space, programs, medical needs, and other factors shape each designation.
The First Step Act added a direction that families should know. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b), the BOP should place a person as close as practicable to the person's primary residence and, to the extent practicable, within 500 driving miles of it. The statute qualifies that direction with bed availability, security designation, programming needs, medical and mental health needs, and other concerns. It describes a goal. It does not promise a particular prison.
A person who leaves a camp because the camp is closing has not lost minimum-security status through misconduct. The record that earned the camp placement still belongs to that person. Our lesson on federal prison security levels, from supermax to camp describes how the system scores people and why a clean record opens lower-security options.
Prepare Your Papers Before the Bus Arrives
My sentence began in a high-security penitentiary on the East Coast, while my family lived in Seattle. Over the following decades I served time at several institutions, including more than seven years at Fort Dix. Every move taught me the same lesson about paperwork. The staff at the next prison would form their first impression from my file, not from anything I said when I arrived.
A person who expects a transfer can ask the unit team, before the move, for copies of the documents that describe the work already completed. Those may include the most recent program review, the First Step Act time credit assessment, the education transcript, certificates from classes, and work evaluations. Keep copies in a folder you can carry, and send another set to a family member. If a course ends early because of the move, write down the course name, the instructor, the hours completed, and the date you stopped.
A short written summary helps too. One page can list your release date, the programs you have finished, the programs you still want to complete, and the job you held. When you meet your new case manager, that page gives the conversation a starting point and shows that you have been planning.
Help Your Family Plan Visits Again
A transfer changes the family's life as much as it changes the person inside. Visitors will need the new address, the new visiting rules, and time to plan travel. Some families will need to be added to a visiting list again. Our FCI Thomson facility page lists mailing and visiting information for the current institution, and the facility directory on our site covers other federal prisons that families may need to learn about next.
Carole and I married in the visiting room at Fort Dix in 2003. Our relationship grew through letters, phone calls, and visits that we planned weeks ahead. When distance or rules changed, we adjusted the plan rather than letting the connection lapse. A family that knows the release date, the programs underway, and the person's goals can keep supporting those goals from any distance.
Keep Building Your Record at the Next Prison
A move interrupts routines, but it does not erase the work a person has done or the work still ahead. The first weeks at a new prison offer a choice. A person can spend them complaining about the move, or he can register for classes, ask about work assignments, and update his release plan for the new setting.
Our lesson on writing a release plan shows how to lay out housing, work, support, and accountability in a document that staff can review. A plan written before a transfer can travel with you. A plan updated after the transfer shows decision-makers that you adjusted to a changed circumstance and kept moving toward the life you want to build after prison.
Planting an apple tree in the spring does not produce fruit that afternoon. A record works the same way. Each class completed, each work evaluation, and each dated journal entry adds to something that will be ready when someone reviews it later, whether that person is a case manager, a halfway house director, or a probation officer.
Write Your Own Answer
If the BOP told you tomorrow that you would move to a new prison, which documents would you want in your hands, and what would you want your new case manager to read on the first day?
Prison Professors used AI tools to help draft this article. Our team reviewed and edited it for accuracy before publication. It is educational information, not legal advice.
Sources
- WQAD: FCI Thomson will no longer house inmates at satellite camp, BOP says (Nov. 4, 2026)
- KWQC: FCI Thomson satellite camp to no longer house inmates (Nov. 4, 2026)
- QC Online: Satellite camp at Thomson prison will no longer house inmates (Nov. 4, 2026)
- 18 U.S.C. § 3621, Imprisonment of a convicted person