Alcatraz was America's most notorious prison. Trump wants to reopen it

Sydney Morning Herald

06-05-2025

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.'
AP