President Donald Trump on Sunday said he wants to reopen the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, to house "America's most ruthless and violent Offenders"—an asinine idea that critics say will cost an absurd amount of money.
In a Sunday night post on Truth Social, Trump wrote:
REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! 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. No longer will we tolerate these Serial Offenders who spread filth, bloodshed, and mayhem on our streets. That is why, today, 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. We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally. The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Trump’s plan to reopen Alcatraz is imbecilic. The prison was closed in March 1963 because of its crumbling infrastructure, and even then it was too expensive to operate, as all supplies needed to run the facility had to be brought in by boat.
“For example, the island had no source of fresh water, so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week. The Federal Government found that it was more cost-effective to build a new institution than to keep Alcatraz open,” the Federal Bureau of Prisons wrote in a post about the history of the facility.
Paint peels off a wall of the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
Even when it was a prison, three people notoriously escaped from its walls—so it’s not like Alcatraz is some impenetrable fortress.
And making it operational again because Trump—a convicted felon in his own right—thinks Alcatraz sounds like a scary place to put criminals is prohibitively expensive, as it hasn’t operated as a place to house prisoners in more than 60 years and would require millions in renovations.
“If the discussion is to rebuild the prison building to hold people, I don’t think that would be feasible,” John Martini, an expert on Alcatraz, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It would have to be torn down and rebuilt.”
What’s more, Alcatraz now serves as a public landmark operated by the National Park Service, earning more than $60 million annually, so making it a prison again would lose money for the federal government.
Democrats lambasted Trump's idea.
"Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction. The President’s proposal is not a serious one," former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco where Alcatraz is located, wrote in a post on X.
“Trump’s edict that Alcatraz—which is a museum—will be reopened as a prison is absurd on its face,” California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco, said in a statement. “This major tourist attraction generates significant revenue for the federal government and supports many jobs.”
Wiener added, “But apart from Trump’s continuing unhinged behavior, this action is part of Trump’s ongoing crusade to sabotage the rule of law. He specifically points to judges who won’t let him deport whomever he wants without due process as justification for this stunt. If Trump is serious about doing this, it’s just one more step in his dismantling of democracy—a domestic gulag right in the middle of San Francisco Bay.”
Trump is obsessed with imprisoning people in horrid conditions.
He's deported immigrants—many of them wrongly accused of being in gangs—to a Salvadoran gulag, and is now threatening to deport U.S. citizens to the same human rights abomination.
Trump is also using the Guantanamo Bay detention camp—where prisoners were infamously tortured during former President George W. Bush’s tenure—to house deported migrants.
White supremacist, former Proud Boy, and convicted felon Enrique Tarrio
And the Trump administration is now in talks with Rwanda to send deported immigrants to prisons in the country that only a few decades ago carried out a horrifying genocide in which hundreds of thousands of people were brutally murdered and raped.
Of course, at the same time Trump has salivated about sending people to inhumane prisons, he has freed his supporters who were convicted for crimes they committed on Jan. 6, 2021—when they broke into the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent Joe Biden's victory from being certified—and has vowed to compensate them with your tax dollars.
He's even hosted some of those felons at his Mar-a-Lago resort, including white supremacist and former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio over the weekend—who had been serving a 22-year sentence for his crimes on Jan. 6 before Trump commuted his sentence.
Now, as he says the United States is too poor to pay for cancer research, weather forecasting, nutrition assistance for low-income Americans, and more, he is ready to spend potentially hundreds of millions to create a gulag on American soil.
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