Democrats have denounced the plans to restore the notorious maximum-security complex in the San Francisco Bay as a “waste of taxpayer dollars”
The administration of US President Donald Trump has requested $152 million from Congress to restore the Alcatraz prison. Democrats have slammed the plans as “lunacy” and vowed to block their implementation.
Originally a fortress sitting on the eponymous island in the San Francisco Bay, the correctional facility housed inmates from 1934 until 1963, when it was closed due to high operating costs. Among those held at Alcatraz were such notorious criminals as mobster Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly. The prison was considered one of the country’s most secure facilities, with no successful escapes officially recorded.
Presently, Alcatraz is a major tourist attraction in the region, run by the National Park Service.
In a request to Congress for the 2027 fiscal year published on Friday, the Trump administration proposed to “rebuild Alcatraz as a state-of-the-art secure prison facility,” requesting “$152 million to cover the first year of project costs.”
Trump first floated the idea in a post on Truth Social last May, writing: “When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ,” he said at the time.
Several months later, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and former Attorney General Pam Bondi inspected the island, with the latter saying that the “terrific facility” could “hold illegal aliens.”
Commenting on the Trump administration’s latest funding request, former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi wrote on X that the “proposal is absurd on its face and should be rejected outright.”
“I will work with my colleagues in the Congress to use every parliamentary and budgetary tactic available to block this lunacy,” she vowed.
Democratic Senator Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco, similarly accused Trump of seeking to destroy a “top tourist attraction to turn it back into a failed exorbitantly expensive prison.”