Identity and difference

I was. It is weird, and you get used to it faster than you expect.

That is okay.

I am autistic and ADHD and had been on stimulants for twenty years going in. You will not get those inside.

I survived it. You can too.

What is worth doing: get the diagnosis documented before you report, and read PS 5200.06 so you know what accommodations actually exist to ask for. Neither of those gives you your prescription back. Both make the rest of it easier to argue.

Find a new hobby. Nobody is going to bother you.

Oh boy.

You are the group most likely to make an expensive mistake in the first month. Say less than you want to and copy whoever the quietest respected man on the unit is.

Your choice. Plenty of men go for the room and the quiet rather than the religion, and nobody minds.

There are religious services for every faith, and religious accommodation is one of the few areas of the system with actual teeth behind it.

Diet, articles, and time to observe are all things the chaplain can approve, and a written request that names the observance tends to go somewhere.

Your sentence is a different sentence than the one the man next to you is serving, and almost nobody explains that at sentencing.

Four things change:

• No camp. Deportable alien is a Public Safety Factor under PS 5100.08, which puts a floor under your security level no matter how good your points are.
• Credits you earn but cannot use. If there is a final order of removal against you, you still earn FSA credits for your programming, and you cannot apply them to early release. The work counts and the clock does not move.
• No halfway house, no home confinement. An immigration detainer generally takes community placement off the table, and it takes the RDAP year off the table too.
• You do not walk out. At the end of the term you go to ICE custody rather than to the street.

None of that is negotiable from inside. All of it is worth an immigration lawyer's attention before sentencing, alongside your criminal attorney, because the immigration consequence and the plea are the same decision even when they are handled by two different people.