Prison Holding Derek Chauvin Set To Close, Mother Says She Awaits Word On Transfer

TEXAS — The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced July 1 that it will permanently close six institutions, including FCI Big Spring in Texas, according to a BOP press release.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, 50, is currently held at Big Spring FCI with a projected release date of Nov. 18, 2037.

Chauvin's mother, Carolyn Pawlenty, wrote in a Facebook post the same day the closure was announced that she does not yet know where her son will be transferred. She asked people to stop sending him mail at the facility.

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Chauvin was transferred to Big Spring in August 2024, about nine months after he was stabbed 22 times by a fellow inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, Patch has previously reported.

Fellow inmate John Turscak, a former Mexican Mafia leader who told investigators he targeted Chauvin because of his high profile, was charged in the Nov. 24, 2023 attack with attempted murder, assault with intent to commit murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, and assault resulting in serious bodily injury.

Chauvin's previous attorney, Eric Nelson, had asked that Chauvin be kept out of the general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he could be targeted.

Along with Big Spring, the Bureau of Prisons is closing FCI Beaumont Low, FCI La Tuna and its satellite camp, the FMC Lexington satellite camp, FCI Petersburg Low and FCI Taft, the release states. The bureau said the closures address a deferred maintenance backlog exceeding four billion dollars and what it called extreme staffing challenges. Staff at Big Spring and La Tuna will be subject to a reduction in force, while employees at Beaumont, Lexington and Petersburg will be transferred to other units, according to the release.

"We are a Bureau that acts," BOP Director William K. Marshall III said in the release, adding that the closures are necessary to address longstanding infrastructure and staffing challenges.

The release does not specify a closure date or say when incarcerated people will be transferred out of the affected facilities.

In a comment on her Facebook post, Pawlenty said she had been told the facility would be vacated before March 2027, and that she planned to contact the prison to ask whether visits could still take place this month.

Chauvin was sentenced in July 2022 to 21 years in federal prison for violating George Floyd's civil rights, a sentence he is serving concurrently with a state sentence for second-degree murder.