U.S. President Donald Trump says he is directing his authorities to reopen and develop Alcatraz, the infamous former prison on a hard-to-reach California island off San Francisco, that has been closed for greater than 60 years.
In a publish on his Truth Social website Sunday night (May 4, 2025), Mr. 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, in the present day,” 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.”
Mr. 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 owing 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 owing to the strong ocean currents and cold Pacific waters that surround it — was known as the “The Rock” and housed a few of the nation’s most infamous criminals, together with gangster Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
It has lengthy been a part of the cultural creativeness and has been the topic of quite a few motion pictures, together with “The Rock” starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.
Still within the 29 years it was open, 36 males tried 14 separate escapes, in line with the FBI. Nearly all have been caught or didn’t survive the try. The destiny of three explicit inmates — John Anglin, his brother Clarence and Frank Morris — is of some debate and was dramatised within the 1979 movie “Escape from Alcatraz” starring Clint Eastwood.
Alcatraz Island is now a serious vacationer website that’s function by the National Park Service and is a chosen National Historic Landmark.
Mr. Trump, returning to the White House on Sunday evening (May 4, 2025) after a weekend in Florida, mentioned he’d give you the concept due to frustrations with “radicalised judges” who’ve insisted these being deported obtain due course of. Alcatraz, he mentioned, has lengthy been a “symbol of law and order. You know, it’s got quite a history.”
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons mentioned in an announcement that the company “will comply with all Presidential Orders.” The spokesperson didn’t instantly reply questions from The Associated Press relating to the practicality and feasibility of reopening Alcatraz or the company’s position in the way forward for the previous prison given the National Park Service’s management of the island.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat whose district consists of the island, questioned the feasibility of reopening the prison after so a few 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 period of corrections. The Bureau of Prisons at the moment has 16 penitentiaries performing the identical high-security features as Alcatraz, together with its most safety facility in Florence, Colorado, and the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which is dwelling to the federal dying chamber.
The order comes as Mr. Trump has been clashing with the courts as he tries to ship accused gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, with out due course of. Mr. Trump has additionally floated the legally doubtful thought of sending some federal U.S. prisoners to the Terrorism Confinement Center, referred to as CECOT.
Mr. Trump has additionally directed the opening of a detention middle at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to carry as much as 30,000 of what he has labelled the “worst felony 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.
Published – May 05, 2025 12:59 pm IST
