Disabled Terrorism Inmate Loses Medical Rights Appeal

Mostafa Kamel Mostafa is serving a life sentence at the federal Administrative Maximum Prison (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, after a 2014 conviction for terrorism-related offenses including hostage taking and providing material support to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He has both arms amputated above the elbow and no vision in his left eye. Beginning in 2020, he sued the U.S. Attorney General, the FBI Director, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director, and multiple ADX officials, alleging they violated his constitutional rights by ignoring serious medical needs.

What Mostafa Alleged — and Why It Matters for Prisoners' Rights

The conditions Mostafa described in his complaint were detailed and severe. His prosthetics from the United Kingdom were lost or destroyed in 2016, leaving him without any prosthetics for nearly nine months. Replacement prosthetics caused inflammation and swelling and were not waterproof. His food was routinely delivered sealed in plastic packets he could only open by using his arm stumps and teeth — a practice that, he alleged, caused him to lose all his lower back teeth and two upper back teeth. A note on his cell door stated he needed help opening food packaging; guards ignored it anyway. After a 2019 hunger strike, officers allegedly assaulted him for over seven minutes; he then bled from his arm stump for roughly five hours before receiving bandages, which were left on for three weeks. ADX medical staff told him his toenails would not be trimmed until he ended the hunger strike. When a nurse finally cut them in January 2020, the procedure caused bleeding.

Mostafa's central legal argument was that these conditions amounted to "deliberate indifference to serious medical needs" — a standard under the Eighth Amendment (the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment). He tried to bring that claim using Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, a 1971 Supreme Court decision that allows people to sue federal officers directly for constitutional violations. The district court in Colorado dismissed that claim, finding that Bivens did not extend to his situation. He also argued his claims could be brought under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a law that allows courts to review certain federal agency actions. The district court rejected that route too.

On November 2, 2026, a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit — Judges Matheson, McHugh, and Federico — affirmed every ruling against Mostafa. The court agreed that his Eighth Amendment medical-indifference claim could not proceed under Bivens, that the APA did not provide an alternative path, that he should not be granted leave to amend his complaint again, and that his challenge to deposition transcript costs also failed. The ruling is published, meaning it becomes binding precedent in the Tenth Circuit — covering federal courts in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming.

What This Ruling Means for Immigration and Civil Rights Cases

While Mostafa is not an immigration case in the traditional sense, the ruling carries real weight for immigrants and non-citizens held in federal custody — including immigration detainees. Courts in the Tenth Circuit will now have stronger precedent limiting the use of Bivens claims against federal prison and detention officials. Immigration lawyers say this matters because people held in ICE detention or BOP facilities often face similar medical neglect issues and rely on the same constitutional theories to seek relief. The decision signals that federal courts in this region will be skeptical of such claims, making it harder — not impossible — to sue individual federal officers for medical mistreatment in custody.

What to Do

• If you or a family member is in federal immigration or BOP detention and experiencing medical neglect, document everything in writing — dates, names of staff, what was requested, and what response (or no response) was given.
• File formal grievances through the facility's internal process first. Courts generally require you to exhaust (use up) all internal remedies before a lawsuit can proceed.
• Contact an immigration lawyer or civil rights attorney who handles detention conditions. After this ruling, claims in the Tenth Circuit may need to be structured differently — for example, through the APA or the Rehabilitation Act rather than Bivens.
• If you are outside the Tenth Circuit (not in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, or Wyoming), this ruling does not bind your federal court, but it may still influence judges in other regions.

Related: our step-by-step guide — “Appealing to the BIA”.