My father Ghassan Elashi -- who co-founded the Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Muslim charity in America -- is serving a 65-year-sentence inside a "Communications Management Unit," or CMU in Marion, Illinois. Inmates refer to it as "Little Guantanamo" since two-thirds of the population is Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent. The purpose of the CMU, a segregated unit within a larger prison, is to closely monitor inmates and restrict them from communicating with the outside world, including their attorneys, their families and the media. The Federal Bureau of Prisons secretly opened the Marion unit in 2008, less than two years after opening its counterpart in Terre Haute, Indiana. In doing so, they broke federal law since they did not provide any opportunity for public comment. Last month, in the wake of litigation, officials released the CMUs' proposed rules and opened a two-month public comment period that ends today, June 7.

My father was convicted in 2008 of conspiring to send material support in the form of humanitarian aid to Palestinian charities that prosecutors alleged were fronts for Hamas, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in 1995. The guilty verdicts came a year after the first trial, which ended in mistrial in 2007 after jurors deliberated for 19 days and failed to reach a verdict on most counts. The results of second trial baffled defense attorneys who pointed out that USAID, Red Cross and many international NGOs donated to the same charities listed on the HLF indictment.