Alcatraz was America's most notorious prison. Trump wants to reopen it
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 – 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.
Despite its reputation, in the 29 years it was open – from 1934 to 1963 – 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes, according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or didn't survive the freezing water and swift current.
The fate of three particular inmates – John Anglin, his brother Clarence, and Frank Morris – is of some debate and was dramatised in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz starring Clint Eastwood.
The trio absconded in 1962, leaving behind handmade plaster heads with real hair in their beds to fool guards. 'For the 17 years we worked on the case, no credible evidence emerged to suggest the men were still alive, either in the U.S. or overseas,' the FBI said.
Trump said he'd come up with the idea to reopen Alcatraz because of frustrations with 'radicalised 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.'
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that the agency would 'comply with all Presidential Orders.' The spokesperson did not answer questions 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.
California Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener criticised Trump, saying he wants to create a 'domestic gulag right in the middle of San Francisco Bay'.
While Alcatraz is best known for its years as a federal prison, its history is much longer.
President Millard Fillmore in 1850 declared the island for public purposes and it soon became a military site. Confederates were housed there during the Civil War.
By the 1930s, the government decided it needed a place to hold the worst criminals, and Alcatraz became the choice for a prison.
'A remote site was sought, one that would prohibit constant communication with the outside world by those confined within its walls,' the park service said.
Its remoteness, however, eventually made it impractical. 'The island had no source of fresh water,' according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, 'so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week.'
The daily cost to house someone there in 1959 was triple that a federal prison in Atlanta, the government said. It was cheaper to build a new prison from scratch.
A decade after it was closed as a prison, Alcatraz became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and was opened to the public in 1973.
The park service says the island gets more than 1 million visitors a year who arrive by ferry. A ticket for an adult costs $47.95, and visitors can see the cells where prisoners were held.
Rob Frank, 55, of Springfield, Missouri, said he toured Alcatraz about a decade ago. He said it's hard to imagine the millions of dollars that would be needed to reopen the prison.
'It didn't seem very humane to me,' Frank said. 'They had the cells stacked on top of each other. Small cells. Everything's concrete. It was kind of a dark place.'
The island serves as a veritable time machine to a bygone era of corrections.
The prison bureau already 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.
Trump's order comes as he 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.
The president has also floated the legally dubious idea of sending some federal US prisoners to the Terrorism Confinement Centre, known as CECOT.
Trump has also directed the opening of a detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold up to 30,000 of what he has labelled the 'worst criminal aliens.'
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ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Can Trump bomb Iran and still be 'America First'?
Sam Hawley: Donald Trump was elected on the promise of putting America first and staying out of foreign conflicts. So the US president's decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities caused the first and very public split among his Make America Great Again base with influential figures like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon leading the charge against it. Today, senior political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Molly Ball, on the fighting MAGA factions and what it means for Trump. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Molly, there has been a ceasefire in the Iran-Israel war this week. Just tell me, how big a win is that for Donald Trump? Is Donald Trump a peacemaker? Molly Ball: That is certainly the impression he would like everyone to take away from this episode. I think we are all waiting to learn more about the results of this American intervention in the conflict between Israel and Iran before we can say for sure that that's the case. But the case being made by the Trump administration is that this was an overwhelming victory, that the United States got involved in a very limited fashion and was able to deploy overwhelming force to bring the parties to heel, to bring everyone to the negotiating table and force a very quick end to this conflict in a way that leaves everyone better off and leaves the nuclear threat from Iran potentially permanently, or at least in the very long term, disabled. I think the caution is that there's still a lot that we don't know about what is left of Iran's nuclear capabilities and whether this ceasefire will hold. But for now, as Trump was boasting in the Netherlands, the administration would like this to be seen as an overwhelming success. Donald Trump, U.S President: That had ended the war. I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki. But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war. This ended that with a war. If we didn't take that out, they'd be fighting right now. Sam Hawley: All right, well, let's unpack how this all played out for Donald Trump and his MAGA base, because there really is a fascinating backstory to this. To understand it, it's good to remember that the MAGA movement is all about isolationism, making America great again, America first. Molly Ball: Well, on the one hand, yes. Trump has distinguished himself among Republicans by being relatively skeptical of the use of military force, and in particular, being a very harsh critic of the wars that the US was still somewhat embroiled in when he began campaigning for president in 2015, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was very critical of the administration, former President George W. Bush, for going into Iraq under what he, and I think most people would term, false pretenses. Donald Trump, 2015: And I said, if you go after one or the other, in this case, Iraq, you're going to destabilize the Middle East. That's what's gonna happen. You're gonna destabilize the Middle East. And that's exactly what happened. We totally destabilized the Middle East. We have now migrations, largely because of what's happened afterwards. You know, Iraq was horrible. It was stupid to go in. We should have never gone in. Molly Ball: He also vowed to pull the United States out of Afghanistan, although it was his successor, Joe Biden, who ended up rather messily completing that task. And he has consistently said that he believes in peace. He doesn't believe in nation building or expending American resources on fighting other countries' battles abroad. I think he and many of his allies would argue that he is not an isolationist per se, but he stands for America first, which means that we only become involved when we see it in our clear national interest to do so. And there's a skepticism of multilateralism and of large-scale foreign alliances that of course we've seen play out over both of Trump's terms. Sam Hawley: Well, let's Molly, step through how all this played out. When Israel first started its strikes on Iran on the 13th of June, Donald Trump's administration was really like, we have nothing to do with this. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, stressed that Israel was acting on its own. Just remind me about the initial response. Molly Ball: That's right. It was this very interesting dance that played out where at first it did appear that the administration wanted to separate itself from what was happening. And this came after some weeks, if not months, of Trump seeming to distance himself from Israel and from Prime Minister Netanyahu. Trump recently took his first foreign trip to the Middle East. He went to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region, but he did not visit Israel, as is somewhat traditional for American presidents to do. So the initial impression of what was unfolding in the Middle East was that the administration was distant from this and was even potentially disapproving of it. We've subsequently reported that there was a lot of discussion and argument within the administration between different officials who had different views of the conflict. But it was only a matter of hours until Trump himself weighed in. And he seemed much more eager than his own Secretary of State to sort of take ownership of what was happening. He was saying no, no, that he had spoken to Netanyahu before this happened, that he approved of what was happening and viewed the US as much more of a partner in the conflict. So those early signals turned out to have been a bit of a red herring. Sam Hawley: So then Trump grows more publicly supportive of the Israeli strikes. And at that point, it becomes pretty clear, doesn't it, that there's a split emerging in the MAGA world. And there are these two factions. Just explain those. Molly Ball: You know, for many in Trump's political base, I'm thinking of extremely Trump loyal politicians, elected officials, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Congresswoman from Georgia. She spoke very strongly against any kind of American involvement. The media personality, podcaster Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, who of course is very close to Trump and introduced him at the Republican convention last summer, also spoke very strongly against what was happening as well as the sort of MAGA propagandist and former Trump White House strategist, Steve Bannon. So you did have these very prominent forces who are seen as sort of speaking for the populist nationalist Trump ideology, who were all counseling very strongly against any kind of American involvement. Sam Hawley: So these figures, Molly, they're going pretty hard against America getting involved in this conflict between Israel and Iran. You mentioned, of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a big supporter of Donald Trump's. She was on CNN. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican Congresswoman : The MAGA is not a cult and I'm entitled to my own opinion. I can support the president at the same time as I say, I don't think we should have foreign wars. Sam Hawley: And she also appeared on Steve Bannon's podcast, War Room. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican Congresswoman : Six months in, six months in, Steve, and here we are, turning back on the campaign promises and we bombed Iran on behalf of Israel. Yes, it was on behalf of Israel. And you wanna know the people that are cheering it on right now? Their tune is going to drastically change the minute we start seeing flag-draped coffins. Sam Hawley: And there was this exchange between Tucker Carlson on his podcast with the Republican Ted Cruz. Tucker Carlson, podcast host: How many people live in Iran, by the way? Ted Cruz, US Senator: I don't know the population. Tucker Carlson, podcast host: At all? Ted Cruz, US Senator: No, I don't know the population. Yeah, I- Tucker Carlson, podcast host: How could you not know that? Ted Cruz, US Senator: I don't sit around memorising population tables. Tucker Carlson, podcast host: Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government. Sam Hawley: They're really not holding back. Molly Ball: That's right. I think these are also voices that have tended to be a bit more skeptical of the American relationship with Israel than many in the Republican Party and on the right have traditionally been. On the other hand, you know, other voices both in the political movement and certainly in the administration were counseling that this was something that we should be involved in, you know, reminding Trump that he has always said for many years that for Iran to have a nuclear weapon would be bad for the United States, bad for Israel, and bad for the world. And this was invoked by Trump repeatedly as he began to accelerate his threats toward the Iranians, talking about the ultimatum that he had given for the negotiation of a new nuclear deal, which had elapsed and which he said was the reason that the Israeli strikes were happening when they did, and basically saying that if they weren't going to negotiate, this was going to be the consequence. And then there was this period of waiting where it wasn't at all clear what he was going to do. And he in fact came out and said, nobody knows what I'm going to do. And the world was sort of on tender hooks for about a week. Sam Hawley: So on the one side, there's these isolationists, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and then of course on the other side, there's this deeply pro-Israel camp. A fascinating split though, right, in the MAGA world. Molly Ball: It is a fascinating split, although in retrospect, it looks perhaps less significant if it does turn out to be the case that this was simply a matter of a limited strike and not, you know, a years-long American-involvement in a new war. I think it's a very interesting point. in terms of the American involvement in a new war. I think if that were what was happening, we would see much more dissent. If all it was was an airstrike, I think very few people would ever have argued that America first means that the United States never deploys any kind of military force. And indeed in Trump's first term, there were several occasions in which he deployed American military force, but the point is that there are not ground troops, there are not Americans dying in another country, and there is not a prolonged entanglement in a foreign conflict. So I think everyone's being cautious and wary and wants to see how this plays out, but if in fact that was the end of it, then I don't think there's a lot of hurt feelings on either side. Sam Hawley: Yeah, although there was a fair bit of concern, wasn't there, when Trump then went a bit further and started talking about the idea of regime change in Iran? Molly Ball: Well, regime change is very much what the America first movement is against. It's sort of a part and parcel of the nationalism that Trump and his allies believe in, that countries should look out for their own interests and should not be fighting the battles of others and recklessly spill American blood and treasure. I think if you did have the United States setting out to change the Iranian regime, you would likely have much more dissent from MAGA World. If he then embarked on something that looked similar to those regime change wars of the past, he would come in for quite a bit of criticism. Sam Hawley: All right, well, Molly, the MAGA base that supported his actions say he should get a Nobel Peace Prize. I think that's what Donald Trump would really like. But if the strikes didn't actually obliterate Iran's nuclear program and there is deep uncertainty over whether or not they did, there'd still be, wouldn't there, some seemingly unhappy people within MAGA? Or do they just let that go? Molly Ball: I think that remains to be seen. I think the lodestar of the MAGA movement is and will always be Donald Trump. His critics would call it a cult of personality, but they believe very deeply in his wisdom and his decision making. So there is a lot of trust in him. There is a lot of willingness to be guided by what he sees as best and by the arguments that he makes, even when they can sometimes be quite inconsistent. I think we're all waiting to learn more about what the end result of all this has been and how tenuous this momentary peace actually is. Trump has said many times that he wants and believes he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, whether that's because of the competitiveness that he feels with former President Obama or simply a manifestation of his rather sizable ego. But if it does turn out that this is the beginning of a lasting peace in the Middle East, it sounds far-fetched, but that would certainly be a remarkable thing if it were to happen. Sam Hawley: And what about those early critics, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Molly, we do know that Donald Trump likes to surround himself with true loyalists. So is he really going to keep them in the fold or would he prefer them not to be there anymore? What do you reckon? Molly Ball: I don't think anybody's getting exiled or kicked out of the movement for this. And I think a vigorous debate was had that was quite interesting and quite revealing about the sort of contours of the Trump movement. But at the end of the day, people come and go from Trump's orbit, but as long as he feels that they ultimately believe in what he believes in and have his sort of political best interests at heart, he doesn't tend to kick them out. Sam Hawley: Molly Ball is a senior political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Credible intelligence' of severe damage to Iran's nuclear sites: CIA
Washington: The CIA says there is credible intelligence that Iran's nuclear program was severely damaged by US bombing, citing new information from reliable sources, as US President Donald Trump stepped up his attacks on reporters who have queried the extent of the destruction. It came as the Trump administration provided slightly more details about the damage it claims was done, saying a uranium conversion facility at Isfahan in central Iran had been 'wiped out'. Trump said the US believed Iran had been unable to move out uranium stockpiles and other equipment before the attack. The administration also moved to dampen scepticism about the efficacy of the strikes by scheduling a news conference at the Pentagon on Thursday morning (10pm Thursday AEST) that Trump said would provide 'irrefutable' evidence of the mission's success, as well as a private briefing for members of Congress. Trump again dismissed a preliminary report from the Defence Intelligence Agency, an arm of the Pentagon, which said it was plausible the sites hit by the US were only partially damaged. Loading 'Since then, we've collected additional intelligence. We've also spoken to people who've seen the site, and the site is obliterated. And we think everything nuclear is down there, they didn't take it out,' he told a news conference after the NATO summit in the Netherlands. 'We think we hit them so hard and so fast, they didn't get to move [the material]. It's very, very heavy, it's very, very hard to move. They were way down, they were literally 30 to 35 storeys down underground. 'We think it's covered with granite, concrete and steel.'
ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
Donald Trump calls for Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial to be cancelled
US President Donald Trump has called for Israel to pardon Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or cancel his corruption trial, saying the US would save him like it did his country. Mr Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in Israel on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust — all of which he denies. The trial began in 2020 and involves three criminal cases. He has pleaded not guilty. "Bibi Netanyahu's trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State (of Israel)," Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, local time. He said he had learned that Mr Netanyahu was due to appear in court on Monday. Israel's opposition leader Yair Lapid said the US president should keep out of the matter. "With all due respect and gratitude to the president of the United States, he's not supposed to intervene in a legal process of an independent state," Mr Lapid told Israeli news website Ynet. "I hope and suppose that this is a reward he (Trump) is giving him (Netanyahu) because he is planning to pressure him on Gaza and force, to force him into a hostage deal that will end the war." Mr Trump extolled Mr Netanyahu as a "warrior" but also said in his post: "It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu". That appeared to be a reference to US involvement and support for Israeli strikes on Iran's nuclear program. It was unclear if Mr Trump meant the US could do anything to aid Netanyahu in his legal battle. The Republican president described the case against the Israeli leader as a "witch hunt," a term Mr Trump has frequently applied to US attempts to prosecute him and the same term Mr Netanyahu has used to describe his own long-running trial. The warm words contrasted with the rare rebuke he issued on Tuesday over Israel's post-ceasefire strikes on Iran. Reuters
