Over 60 years empty, the windswept island prison Alcatraz has stood empty. Locking up a population of humans for decades at a time is not exactly how free men should live, and once the most infamous penitentiary in the United States, The Rock was shuttered in 1963 and left behind a legacy of isolation, daring escapes, and a haunting place in American culture. Former President Donald Trump now marches behind him to bring it roaring back — bigger than ever.
Trump Sunday night on Truth Social dropped the most recent element of his plan, a full blowout and enlargement of Alcatraz to home the nation’s most ruthless and vicious Offenders. With his trademark tough-on-crime rhetoric driving home a point about how things used to be on the Alcatraz and how they are not on the justice system of today, his remarks.
Trump wrote that: “America has long been beset by vicious, violent and repeat Criminal Offenders.” “Back when this Nation was more serious, we didn’t wince from locking up the worst of the bad and putting them as far from anyone that they would do them harm.”
Trump on Sunday described today’s practice of incarceration as ‘weak’ and ‘chaotic,’ and as such, he has ordered that the Alcatraz, which sits off the California coast, be reopened and enlarged to one day resemble it as it did when it was Arizona’s most violent prison before it closed in 2009.
The language in his statement does not specify how much of an expansion his statement outlines, but it’s clear that it is an overhaul of the island’s current infrastructure. The vision is one of a top security complex that could hold the highest federal inmates, re-offending violent criminals and possibly even immigration detainees.
Part of what he called a “broad strategy” to change the way the U.S. penal system and deportation protocols operate, alienated by what he said were “radicalized judges” determined to apply the letter of the law, the plan is the latest effort from the Republican to take on the liberal wing of the country’s judiciary.
The island, however, is currently no place for Trump’s proposal. These days Alcatraz has long been converted from a feared prison to a top San Francisco tourist attraction. More than 1.5 million visitors a year descend on its abandoned cell blocks to take photos, accept guided tours and hear tales of legendary inmates like Al Capone and among other things, the three escapees who disappeared into the night during the 1962 breakout.
And that same escape helped ensure the fate of the facility. With crumbling infrastructure and ballooning costs, the federal government closed the Alcatraz on March 21, 1963. It has since turned into a National Park Service, monument rather than a correctional facility for the island.
Sharp and swift was the response to Trump’s announcement.
The Bureau of Prisons said only that it would comply with all Presidential Orders, and a spokesperson for the agency issued a measured response. However, asked by the Associated Press whether it was logistically or legally feasible for a prison to reopen on Alcatraz, the only thing they were willing to say was Undefined.
ButNAPOLEON Trump dismissed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, flatly.
Now it is a very popular national park and big tourist spot, Pelosi wrote on X (formerly Twitter). According to Mike Senken, “The President’s proposal is not a serious one.”
They have also raised red flags to legal experts. To transform a national historic site back into a functioning prison would be a seismic change in American federal policy, unlikely cooperation from Congress and an expensive, drawn out legal battle about how such a prison ought to be used.
Trump’s Alcatraz proposal is the latest in a rising crescendo of words about crime and the enforcement of immigration. In the past weeks he announced he would transfer accused gang members to a maximum security prison in El Salvador without ever seeing U.S. courts. He’s also floated a new offshore detention facility for 30, 000 or more’ criminal aliens’ at Guantanamo Bay.
Yet these are controversial ideas that reflect an emphatic attempt to reimport the ‘law and order’ themes that steered his original campaign in 2016, only more so.
That Trump is turning Alcatraz into a political tool is no surprise, but that he may be testing the limits of presidential authority and public tolerance is a bit of news. It will be up to whether his proposal takes off, but it has already brought the question of how America balances justice, security and civil liberties back to life.
Alcatraz was never a prison, it was a symbol. For others, it is the strength of the American justice system. To others, it is cruel, isolation, and the loss of mass incarceration.
Returning to reopen and expand it in 2025 could be seen as brave step back in to deterrence, or teaching nightmare to be best left behind.
The island is still quiet, only the footsteps of tourists can be heard and the stories of ghosts. However with Trump’s post, the question has been thrust into the national limelight: Is resuscitated Alcatraz the way to go to regain order or a fatally romantic anachronism?