The new director of the Federal Prison Office said that the agency “” strongly “will pursue” all the ways to support and implement the president’s agenda after President Donald Trump said he wanted to reopen Alcatraz as a prison “substantially expanded and rebuilt.”
During the weekend, Trump published in Truth Social that he was heading to the Prison Office, together with the Department of Justice, the FBI and the DHS to reopen the facilities.
“The Prison Office (BOP) will strongly seek all the ways to support and implement the president’s agenda,” said BOP director William K. Marshall III, who swore last month. “I have ordered an immediate evaluation to determine our needs and the next steps. USP Alcatraz has a rich history. We hope to restore this powerful symbol of law, order and justice. We will actively work with our application of the law and other federal partners to restore this important mission.
“Just an idea that I had,” Trump told reporters Sunday night when asked what his proposal caused. “And I suppose that because many of these radicalized judges want to have evidence for each one, think about it, each person in our country illegally came illegally. That would mean millions of evidence, and what is happening is so ridiculous.”
Alcatraz, who is in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, has not been an operational prison since 1963, according to the National Parks Service, which has maintained it as part of the National Recreation Area of Golden Gate since 1972. More than 1 million people visit the island every year, according to the BOP.
The island of Alcatraz is shown on May 4, 2025 in the San Francisco Bay, California.
Noah Berger/AP
The installation, which was built as a fort to protect San Francisco Bay and then turned into an army prison before celebrating federal inmates, has housed notorious prisoners such as the gangster to Capone. Known as “The Rock”, the prison was on average 260 to 275 people, according to the prison office, and many inmates considered that the living conditions in the prison are better than the majority at that time, says the agency.
It was estimated that it would take $ 3 million to $ 5 million for restoration and maintenance work to maintain open prison in addition to daily operating costs, which were much higher than other federal prisons. The daily cost per capita of Alcatraz in 1959 was $ 10.10 compared to $ 3.00 for the Federal Prison in Atlanta.
A recent inspector General Report estimated that the Office of Prison Facilities throughout the country needed repairs worth $ 2 billion. The BOP has had to close the facilities due to the serious conditions within some prisons.
Elizabeth Neumann, former DHS cabinet deputy director, told ABC News Live that Bop “already has some fairly significant problems with their existing prisons.”
“They have closed a number in recent years just because they cannot keep them. Therefore, try to change something that has not been operational for 60 years, and make it habitable that people are imprisoned would be a lot of money,” he said.
And it is not just the cost of preparing the installation to house inmates, he said.
“San Francisco is a very high cost of living. Federal employees are paid more if they work in those high -cost areas. Therefore, it is not really a profitable solution,” said Neumann. “If you are looking to develop the capacity of the producer, it would be more effective to build something new in a part of the country where the cost of living is lower.”
Neumann said he was not surprised by Trump’s suggestion. He said that during his first administration, he was often responsible for investigating some of his proposals.
“They have many ideas. People will leave and study them, then they will return with the facts and, usually, fall at that stage,” he said.
The president of the House of Representatives, Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who represents the area in Congress, demolished Trump’s proposal.
“Alcatraz closed as Federal Penitentiary more than sixty years ago. Now it is a very popular national park and a great tourist attraction. The president’s proposal is not serious,” he published in X.
