Trump's Call to Reopen Alcatraz Prison Meets California Scorn
President Donald Trump's call to reopen Alcatraz, the famed San Francisco-area prison closed more than 60 years ago, drew swift backlash from California Democrats and surprise from visiting tourists.
Governor Gavin Newsom's office dismissed the idea, which Trump introduced in a social media post Sunday, as a 'distraction.' Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the plan is 'not a serious one.' Scott Wiener, a state senator representing San Francisco, likened the idea to a 'domestic gulag right in the middle of San Francisco Bay.'
Perched atop a rocky island, Alcatraz closed in 1963 because it was too expensive to operate. It has since become a tourist attraction that draws more than one million visitors annually and generates tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the federal government, which still owns it.
Trump said he was now directing the US Bureau of Prisons, as well as the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, 'to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America's most ruthless and violent Offenders.'
On Monday, dozens of tourists lined up in San Francisco for the short ferry ride to the island. Rick Kautz, visiting from Stockton in California's Central Valley, supported reopening the site as a prison. The country needs more prisons, he said, and Alcatraz is a safe location. 'If somebody can swim from there and actually survive, more power to them,' Kautz said.
Some visitors, however, said the idea made little sense. 'At the moment it's generating money,' said Kevin Ghallagher, from the UK. 'It's going to go from that to being a cost to the state.'
During its 29 years of operation as a prison, Alcatraz captured the national imagination for housing some of the country's most notorious criminals, including Al Capone and George 'Machine-Gun' Kelly. But the facility needed costly repairs and was nearly three times more expensive to run than other federal prisons, according to the Bureau of Prisons. It was briefly occupied by Native Americans in 1969, an event now viewed by scholars as a landmark moment in civil rights activism.
Trump's comments were his latest provocation to Democrat-led California. The president blamed state policies for January's Los Angeles-area wildfires and has sought to slash funding for the Presidio Trust, which manages a popular national park in San Francisco with views of the Golden Gate Bridge.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
First Published: 6 May 2025, 01:53 AM IST
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