President Trump is asking for $152 million from Congress to try to transform Alcatraz, the popular tourist attraction, back into a maximum-security prison.
The request, included in a 2027 fiscal year budget proposal released on Friday, is the most concrete step the president has taken so far to realize an idea he first mused about last year on social media, when he said he wanted the island in the San Francisco Bay to be enlarged and rebuilt “to house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.”
But the plan faces immense political and practical roadblocks. It has generated enormous pushback in San Francisco, where tourism is one of the biggest industries and Alcatraz is at the top of many visitors’ itineraries.
And Alcatraz, which has not housed an inmate in more than 60 years, is largely in ruins. It has no running water or sewage system. Much of the island, known as “The Rock,” is covered in bird droppings. All supplies must be brought in by boat.
The new White House budget proposal seeks $5 billion for the Bureau of Prisons to improve the nation’s “crumbling detention facilities,” including the makeover for Alcatraz. The $152 million would cover the first year of costs for the “President’s commitment to rebuild Alcatraz as a state-of-the-art secure prison facility,” it states. The full cost of restoring and reopening Alcatraz would be far higher.
Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco last year called the proposal to turn Alcatraz back into a federal prison “not a serious proposal.” Asked on Friday for his thoughts on the Trump administration’s budget allocation, his spokesman pointed back to those same comments and said he had nothing more to say.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, whose congressional district includes most of San Francisco, said that Alcatraz was a historic museum that belonged to the public. “Rebuilding Alcatraz into a modern prison is a stupid notion that would be nothing more than a waste of taxpayer dollars and an insult to the intelligence of the American people,” she said in a statement, vowing to fight the plan.
State Senator Scott Wiener, who is running to replace Ms. Pelosi, said on Friday that he had been one of the few local politicians to take last year’s proposal seriously. He said that while the idea has been dismissed by many as “the ramblings of a crazy person,” many of the president’s ideas that sound off-the-wall become reality.
”Just ask Iran, Venezuela and the people of Minneapolis,” he said. “He says crazy, deranged things, and he often follows up.”
Mr. Wiener said it made no sense to invest so much money into attempting to turn Alcatraz from a popular tourist attraction back into a federal prison.
“We need to do everything in our power to stop this,” he said. “It’s absurd.”
In July, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited Alcatraz to study whether it could be reopened as a federal prison. Ms. Bondi, who was fired this week, and Mr. Burgum shared photos on social media showing them riding a U.S. Coast Guard vessel to the island and walking past a cell block.
“Alcatraz could hold the worst of the worst,” Ms. Bondi told a Fox News reporter at the time. “It could hold illegal aliens. It could hold anything.”
“This is a terrific facility,” she added.
Soumya Karlamangla is a Times reporter who covers California. She is based in the Bay Area.
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