Chicago – May 05, 2025
Donald Trump announced that he had instructed his administration to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the infamous former prison located on an island near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, he stated that the country had suffered for too long from violent, repeat offenders. He claimed that reopening Alcatraz, which was once regarded as one of the most secure and feared prisons in the U.S., would represent a renewed commitment to “law, order, and justice.”
Prominent Democrats dismissed the plan, saying it was not a serious proposal. Alcatraz, also known as The Rock, had been shut down in 1963 and was operating as a popular tourist destination.
Trump wrote that he had instructed the Bureau of Prisons, along with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a significantly expanded and modernized version of Alcatraz. He said the facility would be used to detain the nation’s most dangerous and violent criminals.
At the time, Trump had been at odds with the judicial system over his controversial policy of sending suspected gang members to a prison in El Salvador. In March, he had transferred more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members to the facility and had expressed interest in relocating “homegrown criminals” to foreign prisons as well.
Alcatraz had originally served as a naval defense fort and was later converted into a military prison in the early 1900s. The Department of Justice took control in the 1930s and began housing federal inmates. Some of the most notorious criminals in U.S. history, including Al Capone, Mickey Cohen, and George “Machine Gun” Kelly, had been imprisoned there.
The prison gained fame through popular culture, including the 1962 film Birdman of Alcatraz, starring Burt Lancaster as Robert Stroud, a convicted murderer who became a noted bird expert while serving his sentence. In 1979, the film Escape from Alcatraz dramatized a real-life 1962 escape attempt, with Clint Eastwood portraying the mastermind Frank Morris. The island also served as the setting for the 1996 action movie The Rock, featuring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.
