22 Days Inside Lompoc Prison’s COVID-19 ‘Hellhole’

Dr. Omid Souresrafil is a biomedical engineer who specializes in the design of implantable devices. Originally from Minnesota and married with a teenage son, he is currently serving time for wire fraud at the Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex, where, as a nonviolent, first-time offender, he teaches GED classes. Unlike many of his fellow prisoners, Souresrafil doesn’t deny his guilt. “I have reiterated many times that I am absolutely guilty of the crimes I have committed,” he recently wrote to a judge, “and have strived to redeem and reform myself.” His release date is January 22, 2025.

Souresrafil, however, now finds himself locked inside the country’s worst prison COVID-19 outbreak. More than 1,000 Lompoc inmates and guards have tested positive for the disease, and four inmates have died. While prison officials are keeping their response to the ongoing health crisis highly secretive — refusing to communicate with Santa Barbara County’s top officials and health experts, and even members of Congress — inmates and their families are continuing to expose disturbing incidents of apparent neglect and mistreatment by staff. Souresrafil recently added to this growing body of evidence by providing attorneys a sworn declaration, dated May 27, that details his own experience at the complex.

On May 1, according to his declaration, 50-year-old Souresrafil checked himself into the prison’s small medical bay complaining of heart palpitations and shortness of breath. He tested negative for COVID-19, but the nurse ordered him under strict quarantine in H-Unit, where he spent 22 days in pain and panic in an 8’x8′ cell. “During every one of the 22 days, I could hear the 100+ inmates coughing and calling the guards for help,” he wrote. “Several collapsed and needed resuscitation before being taken by ambulance to Lompoc Medical Center. … I thought I was going to die, and there were times I felt I wanted to.”