President Donald Trump’s fascination with reopening Alcatraz, a dilapidated former state prison off the coast of San Francisco, seems motivated more by symbolism than necessity and could risk becoming the administration’s biggest boondoggle.
Trump has enthusiastically floated the idea of restoring Alcatraz to its former glory multiple times, each time met with intense pushback over its impracticality and astronomical cost, estimated at $2 billion.
Known as “the Rock,” Alcatraz has been featured in many Hollywood movies and is held in the cultural consciousness as a tough place where the worst of the worst go. That makes it attractive to Trump, who sees himself as the “law and order” president.
Indeed, for nearly three decades, the California prison housed some of the most notorious criminals in U.S. history, including gangster Al Capone, George “Machine Gun Kelly” Barnes, and Robert Stroud, better known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz.”
The problem is, in his enthusiasm to bring back Alcatraz, Trump has disregarded the prison’s outdated technology and the very reason then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy chose to close it in the first place: It was too costly to maintain and operate.
The Bureau of Prisons, which would be tasked with running Alcatraz, has been struggling with short staffing, chronic violence, and crumbling infrastructure at its current facilities. Adding a rebooted Alcatraz into the mix would not only be costly but, some say, a waste of time, space, and effort.
On Thursday, Trump sent Attorney General Pam Bondi and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to visit the prison, which has since been turned into a horticultural paradise and tourist site, complete with a bookstore and cafe. While the Bondi field trip was nothing short of an orchestrated redirect by the administration that had taken heat over its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, it did open up new questions about Trump’s fascination with Alcatraz, its brand recognition, history, myths, environmental effects, and costs to taxpayers should he sign off on it.
“Alcatraz could hold the worst of the worst, it could hold middle-class violent prisoners, it could hold illegal aliens, it could hold anything,” Bondi told Fox News, who accompanied her and Burgum on the trip. “This is a terrific facility, needs a lot of work, but no one has been known to escape from Alcatraz and survive.”
People tried to escape the facility. It is still unclear whether they made it to land. Over the 29 years that Alcatraz operated as a prison, 36 men were involved in 14 escape attempts. Of those, 23 prisoners were caught, six were shot and killed, and two drowned. The fate of five other men is still unknown. They are presumed to have drowned, though there is evidence that contradicts the claim.
Trump has also been impressed with the supposed shark-infested waters surrounding the prison, which make the area dangerous and unsuitable for swimming. The president said he has seen renderings of the potential new facility with sharks patrolling the waters around the prison. The problem with the rendering is that it’s not possible.
In fact, documents from the BOP debunk many myths about Alcatraz made famous in movies.
“There are no ‘man-eating’ sharks in San Francisco Bay, only small bottom-feeding sharks,” the BOP stated on its webpage. “The main obstacles were the cold temperatures, the strong currents, and the distance to shore (at least 1-1/4 miles).”
The BOP also said that prior to Alcatraz’s opening in 1934, “a teenage girl swam to the island to prove it was possible.”
She wasn’t the only one.
“Fitness guru Jack LaLanne once swam to the island pulling a rowboat, and several years ago, two 10-year-old children also made the swim,” the BOP added.
Former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who has been swimming in the bay several times a week since 1992 and has swam from Alcatraz seven times, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he has seen “quite a few sea lions, some harbor seals and no sharks — other than some land sharks named Pam Bondi and her entourage” on his outings.
Sharks aside, Alcatraz has many other problems that need fixing before it can become a functional maximum-security prison.
A pricetag of more than $2 billion to fix the place up has been reported by Axios. This estimate includes the cost of refurbishment and construction of a new prison on the island. If the Trump administration wants to keep the current facility, it would also cost hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the electrical system up to modern standards, haul water, food, and employees from the mainland, and send sewage back in return.
Currently, Alcatraz is a tourist destination generating about $60 million in annual revenue and sees about 1.4 million visitors a year, according to the nonprofit organization Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which works with the National Park Service.
The conservancy said, “Reopening Alcatraz as a prison would erase decades of progress and miss the point of what this place has become. The island is working, not as a prison, but as a national park that brings history, nature, and people together in a way few places can.”
For Alcatraz to operate again as a prison, Congress would also have to pass legislation to remove National Environmental Policy Act and Historic Preservation Act requirements for the area, which could be a lot easier said than done.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) called plans to reopen Alcatraz “batsh*t crazy.”
“As for the merits of this proposal, if you thought ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ was dumb, cruel, and wasteful, you’ll run out of adjectives for this idiotic political stunt,” he said. “I told Secretary Burgum last month that not a single serious person at the National Park Service, from superintendents to janitors, thinks this is a good idea. It would also be a financial boondoggle, not just the massive amount it would cost to reopen Alcatraz as a prison, but all the money and goodwill the Park Service would lose from closing one of America’s most popular tourist destinations.
“The bottom line: this is deeply idiotic, transparently political, and ultimately unlikely to happen. The only possible rational explanation for why Pam Bondi was touring Alcatraz is that she thinks it might be a good place to hide the Epstein files.”
Unlike the original Alcatraz, the Trump administration had much better luck capitalizing on its name and lore when it built “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida at record speed.
“Alligator Alcatraz” is a makeshift detention facility that was created in a matter of days. Workers transformed the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport from an 11,000-foot isolated airstrip in the Everglades into a temporary tent facility to house undocumented migrants.
A DAY WITH FLORIDA STATE TROOPERS NABBING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS FOR ‘ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ’
“The incredible thing is picking the site … it might be as good as the real Alcatraz, so I really think it could last for as long as they want to have it,” Trump said. “You could morph this into the prison system.”
There have already been complaints about the inhumane treatment at Alligator Alcatraz and the shortcuts the government took to get it up and running.