US officials visit Alcatraz amid Trump's plan to reopen island prison

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Fri 23 May 2025 19.04 EDT
Last modified on Fri 23 May 2025 19.51 EDT


Federal prison officials visited Alcatraz last week after Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this month of plans to rebuild and reopen the infamous island prison, which has been closed for over 60 years. David Smith, the superintendent of the Golden Gate national recreation area (GGNRA), told the San Francisco Chronicle that officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons are planning to return for further structural assessments.

“They have been out here. They’ll be coming out again to do assessments of the structure,” Smith told the news outlet. The island facility has been closed since 1963, when then attorney general Robert F Kennedy ordered its shutdown amid high operating costs, limited space and multiple escape attempts.

BOP director William Marshall told Fox News that engineering teams are already surveying the site. “We’ve got engineering teams out there now that are doing some assessments, and so I’m just really excited about the opportunity and possibilities,” he said. In recent months, the US government has moved to reopen at least five previously closed detention centers and prisons.

Although California lawmakers have dismissed the Alcatraz proposal as a “distraction” and not a serious plan, the Trump administration is actively working – with the help of private prison companies – to reopen other facilities, some of which are already back in operation.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/23/trump-alcatraz-prison

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A DUer rightly bemoaned - "WHAT FRESH HELL?"

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Regimentation, detention, incarceration, lack of due process

This is some serious sick shit.

[PatSeg]

21. The overall picture is rather horrifying

and that is just taking into account what we know. There could be more going on behind the scenes. It is pretty easy to see what the price of dissent will be in this country going forward.

[creon]

2. inane

THIS idea is silly and asinine.

[ananda]

9. Just another demented whim that Trump thinks is genius.

All these stupid whims sure are adding up.

At least Canada and Greenland are off the table... for now.

Destruction of every single good things in America
is proceeding apace.

[creon]

31. el gringo loco

is gaga

[Autumn]

3. He should demolish it and build a golf course there.

Then WE build a fucking fence around it.

[4th]

4. Bravo!

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Sure, let's spend a few hundred grand on engineering consultants followed by $100 billion or so

to rebuild a tourist attraction.

[surfered]

6. Jeez! Elect a clown, expect a circus. Where's DOGE on his latest whacky idea?

[gab13by13]

7. I visited Alcatraz 25 years ago

and it was in disrepair.

Won't see Krasnov visit that island, too windy, his sage brush would blow off.

[rurallib]

8. I would be in favor of him being moved in there

[BumRushDaShow]

10. If they continue to look at that as a "viable" facility

I wouldn't be surprised if they try to co-opt Eastern State Penitentiary over here in Philly (also a tourist attraction), as it was decommissioned about a decade later than Alcatraz - in the 'early '70s).



(we are in that type of Twilight Zone world now )

[johnnyfins]

11. Yep. Most cells are solitary confinement.

Each one having its own little exercise yard. .

We joke, but they are looking at EVERY closed facility in the country. Probably Holmesburg too.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. And possibly the old Graterford prison (since SCI Phoenix is open now)

[johnnyfins]

22. Forgot that one

I can't actually believe Im discussing this, but it's where we are. Ugh.

[displacedvermoter]

29. Is Andersonville an option? Is Devil's Island an opportunity for off shore imprisonment?

Can prison ships be deployed to New York harbor?

[appleannie1]

15. My first thought too. Then there is Waverly Hills.

[twodogsbarking]

12. Will it be renamed Gullf of Auschwitz ?

[PortTack]

13. More wasted money!

[appleannie1]

14. Another waste of tax dollars like the wall. Rebuilding bridges would make more sense.

[generalbetrayus]

16. Maybe Orange Julius Caesar will change his mind and tear down the facility

and turn the island into Merde-a-Lardo West.

[William Seger]

18. RUMP has the emotional maturity and impulsiveness of a 12-year-old

... and now he's suffering from a delusional state called power psychosis -- a mental illness caused by having too much unchecked power. In fact, he has replaced Putin and other dictators as the textbook example of power psychosis. And he is a Dunning-Kruger basket case, so there's absolutely no point in trying to explain to him why the things he does are idiotic.

[lonely bird]

33. Hey

Don’t insult 12 year olds.

More like a four year old.

😉😁

[William Seger]

41. LOL, but there's a specific reason I peg it at 12

Psychologists (and my experience with four kids) say that, around that age, most kids go through a narcissistic phase, but most outgrow it, or at least it's not their predominant behavior. Some, however, suffer from "arrested development" and are raging narcissists for the entire life -- no fully effective therapy has been found.

[AlexSFCA]

19. it is now a very expensive piece of land

It collects revenue from tourism, converting it into active prison would be a huge waste of money. There is plenty of cheap land to build prisons.

[BradBo]

20. Just imagine the cost per prisoner.

[Figarosmom]

23. 5 other closed prisons as well

I wonder why they need so much additional prison space? Doesn't bode well. Stinks of concentration camps.

[orangecrush]

24. When we take back the Presidency

Bulldoze the fucking thing.

?si=06CpZHpEeKFNOF6D

[Wolf Frankula]

25. Rump has been convicted of 34 felonies.

Confine him there.

Wolf

[ChazInAz]

30. No need to do any repairs.

Just lock him and his co-conspirators in as it is. Constant video coverage of the entire island. Air drop supplies once a week and let them fight for them, with the resultant carnage being broadcast nightly so we can keep score of the survivors.
Kind of geriatric "Lord of The Flies".

[Walleye]

26. What fresh hell is right. How many of these narcissistic fantasies are we gonna be forced to participate in?

[Deuxcents]

27. Spend, spend, spend but not on food, healthcare, education or infrastructure.

[DBoon]

28. are they going to re-open Manzanar as well?

[Prairie Gates]

32. I believe we're at the pre-concepts of a plan stage

More idiotic nonsense wasting everybody's time and money over some trolling bullshit.

[BumRushDaShow]

36. Well based on the millions wasted to try to prepare to send 30,000 immigrants to Guantanamo

where they even bought and started setting up large tents and whatnot, and then realized there was no AC for the tents, let alone the fact that they didn't have 30,000 to put there, they finally decided to abandon that far-fetched crap. This was their reality show "photo op" thing-



They ended up shipping the couple hundred who were sent there, back to the U.S. and put them in detention in Louisiana, and that is when the lawsuits started flying.

So don't put it past them to make a ridiculous "attempt" to engage in more "waste, fraud, and abuse", and then find it fail.

[rickford66]

34. Has anyone mentioned Gulag yet? If not, GULAG !

[usonian]

35. Oh, how I wish I was Captain of that ferry boat

Bye, Bye, suckers. 🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈

[Karasu]

37. All just because he watched fucking Escape from Alcatraz. His incoherent rant about "movies" when asked about this

on-camera makes that very, very fucking obvious.

This is juvenile and stupid as hell. But what else would you expect?

[Blue Full Moon]

38. What movies should be arranged for him to watch

[riversedge]

39. ..After its closure, the island took on a second life as a site of Indigenous resistance. In 1969, a group of Native Ame

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/alcatraz-tourists-trump-prison-reaction

...........After its closure, the island took on a second life as a site of Indigenous resistance. In 1969, a group of Native American activists occupied Alcatraz, declaring it sovereign Indigenous land in an act of protest against broken treaties and systemic neglect. The 19-month occupation galvanized the modern Indigenous rights movement, whose legacy endures today.

“I think it should remain what it is, a national monument,” said Jacqueline Kemokai, a retired nurse from Tampa, Florida, who was moved by that history. “They’ve taken so much of the past away already and there needs to be something left behind to keep our memories going.”

Visitors view the cellblock during a visit Alcatraz the day after Trump’s declaration.
Visitors view the cellblock during a visit to Alcatraz the day after Trump’s declaration. Photograph: Fred Greaves/Reuters

It’s a history that’s alive and well for Morning Star Gali, a member of the Ajumawi band of Pit River Tribe. For the past 16 years, Gali has been organizing the largest sunrise ceremony in the US on Alcatraz on behalf of the International Indian Treaty Council. The events, hosted in November on Indigenous People’s Day and Thanksgiving, attract thousands of people, including members of more than 300 tribes from across the US.

Turning Alcatraz back into a prison would end the sunrise ceremonies, said Gali, who has been attending them since she was a child and got her name, Morning Star, there. For her, Alcatraz is a sacred site of Indigenous resistance and resilience. “Reopening Alcatraz as a prison would not just be an act of historical erasure – it would be a declaration that this country is doubling down on its most violent legacies,” she said by phone. “That’s where the first California Indian leaders were imprisoned, and that’s a history that’s still not widely shared.”

[YoshidaYui]

40. FUCK DONALD TRUMP