Donald Trump says he is directing his government to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the former prison on an island off the coast of California.
In a message on his Truth Social site on Sunday, President Trump said that “for too long America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat criminal offenders”.
The reopening of Alcatraz would serve as a “symbol of law, order, and justice,” he said.
The prison was closed in 1963, and Alcatraz Island is currently operating as a tourist site. It lies near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
“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,” Trump wrote.
The prison would “house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders”.
President Trump has been clashing with the courts over his policy of sending alleged gang members to a prison in El Salvador. In March, he sent a group of more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members there. He has also talked about sending “homegrown criminals” to foreign prisons.
Alcatraz was originally a naval defence fort, and it was rebuilt in the early 20th Century as a military prison. The Department of Justice took it over in the 1930s and it began taking in convicts from the federal prison system. Among its more famous inmates were the notorious gangsters Al Capone, Mickey Cohen and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
The prison was also made famous by the 1962 film, Birdman of Alcatraz, starring Burt Lancaster, about the convicted murderer Robert Stroud, who while serving a life sentence on the prison island developed an interest in birds and went on to become an expert ornithologist.
It was also the site of the 1996 film The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, about a former SAS captain and FBI chemist who rescue hostages from Alcatraz island.
The prison closed because it was too expensive to continue operating, according to the Federal Bureau of Prison website. It was nearly three times more costly to operate than any other federal prison, largely due to its island location.
