Trump wants to reopen Alcatraz. Californians are deeply skeptical.

Boston Globe

06-05-2025

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But on 'The Rock' - the nickname for this craggy piece of land a mile from the San Francisco waterfront - the president's proposal looked like a longshot. Visitors to the site, now a popular tourist attraction, said it seemed like an outlandish idea as they surveyed the prison's remaining buildings, all in varying states of disrepair. Locals took it as yet another attack on the legendarily liberal city, long one of Trump's favorite punching bags. And elected officials treated it as both dangerous and distracting, vowing to either impede or ignore the plan.
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'The chances of Alcatraz being repurposed as a prison are about as large as landing a man on Pluto,' said Aaron Peskin, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who regularly swims in the frigid bay waters surrounding the island. 'If I had my way, there would only be one prisoner in that place, and it would be Donald Trump.'
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Trump, continuing to claim that the country is overrun by violent crime despite evidence to the contrary, first said he would direct his administration to 'reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt' Alcatraz to house America's 'most ruthless and violent' offenders. He has sent mixed signals about the plan since, appearing to walk it back as 'just an idea I've had' in one set of comments before doubling down in another.
William K. Marshall III, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, said in a statement that he had 'ordered an immediate assessment to determine our needs and the next steps' to reopen Alcatraz.
But much remains unclear about the project, which would be astronomically expensive and extraordinarily difficult to enact.
As Trump worked to finesse his plan, tourists continued flocking to the island, lining up to take the 15-minute ferry ride from San Francisco's Pier 33 to the decommissioned prison, which is now managed by the National Park Service.
Nearly all were skeptical of Trump's proposal.
'He's not going to get it approved,' said Ashley Macey, a 27-year-old Brit and true crime devotee who said a chance to visit Alcatraz was the main motivation for her transatlantic trip. Trump's statements, she said, were 'wishy-washy.'
Others, like 29-year-old Kevin Sumlin, worried about the message such a move would send.
'I think it would put a dirt cloud back over the prison,' said Sumlin, in town from Connecticut, as he waited to board the ferry.
Yesenia Valencia, an 18-year-old from California's Central Valley, was visiting the prison on a high school class field trip. She and her fellow students left home before sunrise Monday
to make the journey and saw Trump's comments while en route.
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'We watched it on the way to San Francisco and thought, 'What the heck?'' she said. 'It's crazy. I feel like he shouldn't be doing that.'
Another visitor, a 46-year-old from Iowa, said reopening Alcatraz would be 'a waste of money.' She spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid a dispute with her husband, a Trump voter.
And several international tourists - from Argentina, Poland, and the Netherlands - declined to speak on the record out of fear that they would not be allowed to travel freely in the United States or obtain visas to live here if they were quoted disagreeing with the president.
'It's like a horror movie,'
a 70-year-old Dutch traveler said of Alcatraz, adding that it would be 'insane' to reopen it.
One visitor interviewed, Marivic Hammari, a 43-year-old from nearby Sausalito, said she agreed with Trump's mission, despite the cost, because 'it would be nice to use the building.'
Several state and local Democrats issued muted reactions, dismissing Trump's plan as a lark meant to divert attention from other negative headlines, including the ongoing ripple effects of his tariff regime.
A spokesperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom said, 'Looks like it's distraction day again in Washington, D.C.' And San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said it was 'not a serious proposal.'
But state Senator Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco, said Trump in his second term has shown more follow-through than in his first and leaders cannot afford to write off even his far-out musings.
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'It's a combination of ridiculously stupid and scary,' Wiener said. 'If he does this, he's literally setting taxpayer money on fire.'
A constellation of local small businesses relies on revenue generated by the nearly 1.5 million tourists who visit Alcatraz each year, from tour guides to ferry companies and restaurants along the water. The island, along with the Golden Gate Bridge, is one of San Francisco's biggest draws, a boon especially as the city looks to recover from a pandemic-induced malaise.
This week marks the second time this year Trump has targeted an iconic San Francisco property under federal jurisdiction. In February, the president moved to make cuts to the Presidio Trust, which oversees Presidio National Park, a beloved swath of green space at the city's northernmost tip.
'He clearly doesn't like San Francisco,' Wiener said. Of the Alcatraz plan, he added: 'If there's any way for us to gum this up, we will try to gum it up.'
But logistical, financial, and bureaucratic hurdles may be gummy enough on their own.
When Alcatraz closed in 1963, it was in such bad shape that the federal government ruled it would be more cost effective to abandon it and open another prison elsewhere. It was nearly three times more expensive to run than the average federal facility, and it needed millions of dollars in renovations.
'It hasn't gotten any better,' said John A. Martini, an Alcatraz historian who worked on the island as a Park Service ranger when the agency took over its operations in the 1970s. 'If this were a TV show, like on Home and Garden, the prison would be a teardown.'
The island lacks basic utilities: No running water or sewage system and spotty electricity that relies on fuel shipped in by boat.
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'It has essentially become a stabilized ruin,' Martini said.