Trump says he plans to reopen Alcatraz as a federal prison

Derek Wallbank, Bloomberg News on May 4, 2025

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President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post that he has ordered the reopening of Alcatraz as a prison to “house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

Trump said he’s directing the Bureau of Prisons, Department of Justice, the FBI and Homeland Security to rebuild and substantially enlarge the former maximum security facility, which sits on an island in San Francisco Bay. His post didn’t disclose the costs of such a move, nor an expected timeline for the reopening.

The costs of such a move would likely reach into at least the hundreds of millions of dollars, based on construction budgets for recent state and federal supermax facilities. U.S. lawmakers may also have a say, as Congress would likely need to approve additional prison-building funding to enable Trump’s plan, which would stack atop the roughly $3 billion maintenance and repair backlog the Bureau of Prisons in 2024 told Congress it was trying to work through.

Alcatraz closed as a federal prison in 1963 after just 29 years of operation because it was too expensive to continue, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The per-capita cost of housing prisoners there was substantially higher than other correctional facilities. In addition, corrosion from the salt air of San Francisco Bay means the facility requires additional maintenance to sustain that prisons in other locations don’t.

Despite failing as a federal prison, Alcatraz enjoys a near mythological status in American popular culture as a fortress for housing the worst-of-the-worst offenders, including Al Capone and Robert Stroud, the so-called “Birdman of Alcatraz.” The former prison has served as the setting for several Hollywood blockbusters including Clint Eastwood’s ‘Escape from Alcatraz’ and Sean Connery’s ‘The Rock.’

Alcatraz currently operates primarily as a tourist destination under the National Park Service. While the former main cellhouse is the featured attraction, many other buildings on the island that supported the prison’s operation now lie in ruins.