Trump says he will reopen Alcatraz prison
[May 05, 2025]
By JILL COLVIN and MICHAEL R. SISAK
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump says he is directing his
government to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the notorious former prison on
a hard-to-reach California island off San Francisco that has been closed
for more than 60 years.
In a post on his Truth Social site Sunday evening, Trump wrote that,
“For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat
Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute
anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious
Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous
criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s
the way it’s supposed to be.”
“That is why, today," he said, “I am directing the Bureau of Prisons,
together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to
reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s
most ruthless and violent Offenders.”
Trump’s directive to rebuild and reopen the long-shuttered penitentiary
was the latest salvo in his effort to overhaul how and where federal
prisoners and immigration detainees are locked up. But such a move would
likely be an expensive and challenging proposition. The prison was
closed in 1963 due to crumbling infrastructure and the high costs of
repairing and supplying the island facility, because everything from
fuel to food had to be brought by boat.
Bringing the facility up to modern-day standards would require massive
investments at a time when the Bureau of Prisons has been shuttering
prisons for similar infrastructure issues.
The prison — infamously inescapable due to the strong ocean currents and
cold Pacific waters that surround it — was known as the “The Rock" and
housed some of the nation's most notorious criminals, including gangster
Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
It has long been part of the cultural imagination and has been the
subject of numerous movies, including “The Rock” starring Sean Connery
and Nicolas Cage.
Still in the 29 years it was open, 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes,
according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or didn’t survive the
attempt.
The fate of three particular inmates — John Anglin, his brother Clarence
and Frank Morris — is of some debate and was dramatized in the 1979 film
“Escape from Alcatraz” starring Clint Eastwood.
Alcatraz Island is now a major tourist site that is operate by the
National Park Service and is a designated National Historic Landmark.
Trump, returning to the White House on Sunday night after a weekend in
Florida, said he’d come up with the idea because of frustrations with
“radicalized judges” who have insisted those being deported receive due
process. Alcatraz, he said, has long been a “symbol of law and order.
You know, it’s got quite a history.”
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A bird flies above Alcatraz Island on Sunday, May 4, 2025, in the
San Francisco Bay, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that
the agency “will comply with all Presidential Orders.” The
spokesperson did not immediately answer questions from The
Associated Press regarding the practicality and feasibility of
reopening Alcatraz or the agency’s role in the future of the former
prison given the National Park Service’s control of the island.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat whose
district includes the island, questioned the feasibility of
reopening the prison after so many years. “It is now a very popular
national park and major tourist attraction. The President’s proposal
is not a serious one,” she wrote on X.
The island serves as a veritable time machine to a bygone era of
corrections. The Bureau of Prisons currently has 16 penitentiaries
performing the same high-security functions as Alcatraz, including
its maximum security facility in Florence, Colorado, and the U.S.
penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which is home to the federal
death chamber.
The order comes as Trump has been clashing with the courts as he
tries to send accused gang members to a maximum-security prison in
El Salvador, without due process. Trump has also floated the legally
dubious idea of sending some federal U.S. prisoners to the Terrorism
Confinement Center, known as CECOT.
Trump has also directed the opening of a detention center at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold up to 30,000 of what he has labeled
the “worst criminal aliens."
The Bureau of Prisons has faced myriad crises in recent years and
has been subjected to increased scrutiny after Jeffrey Epstein’s
suicide at a federal jail in New York City in 2019. An AP
investigation uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the
Bureau of Prisons. AP reporting has disclosed widespread criminal
activity by employees, dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths
and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to
emergencies, including assaults and suicides.
The AP’s investigation also exposed rampant sexual abuse at a
federal women’s prison in Dublin, California. Last year, President
Joe Biden signed a law strengthening oversight of the agency after
AP reporting spotlighted its many flaws.
At the same time, the Bureau of Prisons is operating in a state of
flux — with a recently installed new director and a redefined
mission that includes taking in thousands of immigration detainees
at some of its prisons and jails under an agreement with the
Department of Homeland Security. The agency last year closed several
facilities, in part to cut costs, but is also in the process of
building a new prison in Kentucky.
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