ALCATRAZ ISLAND, Calif. — The displays on Alcatraz Island, the notorious federal jail that many years in the past was shuttered and preserved as a nationwide park website and vacationer attraction, invite guests to think about what it was prefer to be a guard or an inmate confined to the lonesome, foggy rock in the midst of San Francisco Bay.
However on Monday, a day after President Trump posted on social media that he desires to reopen the practically century-old jail as a “considerably enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to deal with America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” many vacationers had been imagining a really totally different function: what it will be prefer to be the development supervisor who may even have to determine find out how to make that occur.
“I’m all for what [Trump] is doing, however this doesn’t make sense,” mentioned Beverly Klir, 63, an ardent Trump supporter who was visiting from Chicago. “I imagine Gitmo [the prison at Guantanamo Bay] could also be higher. That’s the place all of them belong. They don’t belong right here.”
She and her husband had been standing amid a riot of pink flowers on the island’s craggy bluffs, searching on the Golden Gate Bridge as a pair of Canada geese and three fuzzy ducklings waddled by. Behind them loomed the jail, its fortress-like facade menacing in look, but additionally a testomony to age and climate, with crumbling stucco, deteriorated masonry and leaking joints.
Greater up on the island, outdoors the three-story cellhouse the place a number of the nation’s most incorrigible prisoners had been as soon as locked away in primitive cells, 10-year-old Melody Garcia, visiting with household from Harmony, appeared equally perplexed. “Most of Alcatraz is damaged down and stuff,” she mentioned.
Nonetheless, inside hours of Trump’s pronouncement, the Bureau of Prisons launched a press release saying it was already on the job.
“The Bureau of Prisons will vigorously pursue all avenues to assist and implement the President’s agenda,” mentioned bureau Director William Okay. Marshall III. “I’ve ordered a direct evaluation to find out our wants and the subsequent steps. USP Alcatraz has a wealthy historical past. We stay up for restoring this highly effective image of regulation, order, and justice.”
Many California officers, in the meantime, responded with a spread of ridicule and concern. A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed the pronouncement as a ploy designed to distract voters from Trump’s actions as president. State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) referred to as it “unhinged.” However he additionally cautioned that “when Donald Trump says one thing, he means it,” and speculated that Trump could need to “open a gulag right here within the U.S.”
The U.S. authorities’s presence on Alcatraz started within the 1850s, with building of a fort bristling with cannons to defend San Francisco from hostile ships.
Quickly after, U.S. officers additionally started utilizing it as a navy jail. Throughout the Civil Warfare, the crew of a Accomplice ship, together with Union troopers convicted of rape, homicide, desertion and different offenses, had been imprisoned there. The U.S. Military additionally locked up Hope, Apache and Modoc Indians there and, later, conscientious objectors to World Warfare I.
In 1934, Alcatraz opened as an official federal jail for males who had made escape makes an attempt from different federal prisons, or in any other case misbehaved. Amongst its notable inmates had been Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
Often called “the Rock,” the jail, which had capability for 336 males, earned a spot in well-liked tradition as an island of distant despair. “All people desires to be a person,” mentioned former inmate James Quillen, who served 10 years there, from 1942 to 1952. “You need to be human. And also you weren’t at ‘the Rock.’”
Along with being formidable, the jail was fearsomely costly to keep up and function. So costly, in actual fact, that in 1963, then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy ordered it closed.
John Martini, an Alcatraz historian, mentioned the jail was closed partially as a result of it was constructed with flawed building strategies and was decaying, and it “can be such a cash pit to deliver it as much as requirements … that it was simpler to construct a brand new penitentiary.”
Six years later, the island acquired a distinguished place in Native American historical past when a bunch of Native American activists landed on the island, declaring they had been taking it within the identify of “Indians of All Tribes.” The occupation lasted 19 months, and helped awaken the nation to the considerations of Indigenous People.
When federal brokers moved in to take away the final occupiers in 1971, officers had plans to bulldoze your complete factor. However in 1972, Congress created the Golden Gate Nationwide Recreation Space, and the island as a substitute turned one in every of San Francisco’s most beloved sights. Greater than 1.4 million individuals go to every year, strolling by means of the dank cell blocks and taking in displays on the Native American occupation.
In calling for Alcatraz to be reopened, Trump mentioned its restoration would “function a logo of regulation, order, and justice.”
However the Golden Gate Nationwide Parks Conservancy, a nonprofit that helps protect and assist operations at Alcatraz, issued a press release Monday saying the jail’s stature as a historic landmark and academic vacation spot already serves an essential function.
“Alcatraz hasn’t been a working jail for over 60 years,” the group mentioned in its assertion. “At the moment, it’s a strong image — a Nationwide Historic Landmark preserved all the time, a transformative nationwide park expertise and international website of reflection. … That is the place historical past speaks — and the place we study from the previous to form a greater future. “
John Kostelnik, western regional vp of the Council of Jail Locals 33, mentioned the thought of reopening Alcatraz was not solely an “irresponsible” use of federal cash but additionally a slap within the face to jail guards, who’ve lengthy complained about low wages.
“It simply appears very hypocritical that they got here in and mentioned they’re going to make authorities extra environment friendly and DOGE and all that stuff,” Kostelnik mentioned, utilizing the acronym for Elon Musk’s cost-cutting workforce, “and now they’re saying they’re gonna throw tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} at a logo.”
In December, the Bureau of Prisons mentioned it was closing its troubled federal jail in Dublin, Calif., about 30 miles east of San Francisco, in addition to 5 minimum-security jail camps in states from Florida to Colorado. The bureau mentioned in a doc obtained by the Related Press that it was closing the services to deal with “important challenges, together with a crucial staffing scarcity, crumbling infrastructure and restricted budgetary assets.”
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s workplace directed inquiries in regards to the Alcatraz proposal to the Nationwide Park Service, which didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Vacationers roaming the island Monday appeared preoccupied with two questions: How and why?
“It’s not prepared. It’s on no account, form or type prepared,” mentioned Daniel Mulvad, 24, who lives in San Francisco and was visiting with friends from out of city. He famous that the prices of renovating the construction can be astronomical and appeared mindless provided that, as a vacationer attraction, Alcatraz seemed to be producing an excessive amount of income by means of ticket gross sales and merchandise.
“You’d have to essentially … rewire,” mentioned Alyssa Sibley, 26, of Sacramento, as she stood within the outdated bathe room, staring on the crude and rusting lavatory fixtures.
Tumidei Valentin, 34, a French psychologist vacationing in California, decried it as a “horrible thought.” “Every single day he has new concepts,” Valentin mentioned of Trump, most of them “to make a buzz” and get consideration.
Kristin Nichols, 60, of Palm Springs, who was visiting with household, mentioned that as somebody who is an element Chickasaw she was notably moved by the displays in regards to the Native American occupation.
“The amount of cash it will take to do that…” she mentioned. “I might query the aim.”
She added: “It’s a historic place, and in the event that they flip it again into a jail, it’s going to smash all of the historical past.”
