Trump asks Congress for $152 million to start rebuilding Alcatraz prison

Justine McDaniel, Los Angeles Times on Apr 3, 2026

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is requesting $152 million from Congress to begin“rebuilding” the prison on Alcatraz Island for operational use, though his administration appears to have taken few steps toward advancing the project.

The request, in the president’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2027, resurrects Trump’s attention-grabbing concept of converting the crumbling site — which has stood as a piece of history for more than 60 years — into a working federal prison.

But the Bureau of Prisons on Friday said it had no new information to share about the potential project and no updates about whether assessments that the agency had said it launched last year had been completed.

A spokesperson said the bureau was “moving forward, evaluating, and formulating the actions necessary” and pointed to a May 2025 statement from bureau director William K. Marshall pledging to “vigorously pursue all avenues to support and implement the President’s agenda.”

The funding request was included in Trump’s budget proposal, which provides Congress with a look at the administration’s priorities ahead of the next fiscal year. Congress makes the ultimate funding decisions for the government.

Creating a working prison on the San Francisco Bay island would be extremely costly, the administration’s critics say, and would raise questions about its fate as a historic site that draws more than a million tourists a year.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday she would attempt to block Trump’s proposal in Congress by any means possible, calling it “a stupid notion that would be nothing more than a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

“Alcatraz is a historic museum that belongs to the public, and San Franciscans will not stand for Washington turning one of our most iconic landmarks into a political prop,” she said in a statement.

The $152-million request is for only the first year of the project’s costs. How long the project could take or what the total cost could be are not clear. The budget proposal described the project as a “state-of-the-art secure prison facility.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

“It represents something very strong, very powerful, in terms of law and order,” Trump told reporters last year. “It housed the most violent criminals in the world. ... It sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful, strong, and miserable.”

He characterized the historic site as “rusting and rotting.”

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., vice chair of the Senate appropriations committee, said Trump would waste taxpayer money on Alcatraz “while ignoring billions of dollars in repair-backlog needs for existing” federal prisons.

The government opened the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz in 1934, hoping to use the remote island to house particularly difficult prisoners, according to the National Park Service. Its cells held infamous criminals such as Al Capone, and several unsuccessful escape attempts captured public imagination.

The prison was closed in 1963 after becoming too costly to run. A group of Native American activists occupied the land during a period between 1969 and 1971, and in 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreation area under National Park Service management. It opened to the public as a national park attraction the following year and was later designated a National Historic Landmark.

Trump, who has pushed to round up criminals and pursued plans to open new detention centers in his second term, floated the Alcatraz idea last year, saying he wanted to send “America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders” there.

He directed the Bureau of Prisons to take up the task. In July, then-Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited the island.

“Alcatraz could hold the worst of the worst, it could hold middle-class violent prisoners, it could hold illegal aliens,” Bondi told Fox News during the visit. “This is a terrific facility; it needs a lot of work, but no one has been known to escape from Alcatraz and survive.”

The Bureau of Prisons said at the time that no final decision had been made as to whether to use the site, but that the agency would determine whether “it makes sense operationally, legally, and financially.”

The bureau said then that was working on a cost estimate and feasibility report to present to Congress following a site assessment with the National Park Service and work by engineers and planners on potential budgets and models.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Friday opening Alcatraz would be “prohibitively expensive” for the federal government to undertake. He has previously characterized the concept as part of an attack by the Trump administration on national parks.

“Trump’s continued push to reopen it as a federal prison is a wasteful exercise in futility,” Schiff said. “He should focus on lowering the cost of living for the American people, not raising the cost of our prisons.”