Trump to Reopen Billion-Dollar Alcatraz Prison, Closing Popular National Park
The same administration cutting ranger jobs now wants to pour billions into a prison on public land.
Few ideas capture this administration’s public lands values more clearly than closing a national park and turning it into a federal prison.
Trump’s 2025 budget guts the Park Service – fewer rangers, gutted programs, historic sites left to rot. But somehow there’s money to bulldoze one of the most visited national parks and turn it into a billion dollar prison.
On Sunday night, Trump posted to Truth Social that he had directed the Bureau of Prisons, Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security to “reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ” to house “America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.” He followed up with comments to reporters, calling the island “a symbol of law and order.”
It’s also one of the most visited sites in the entire National Park System.
If this goes forward, Alcatraz wouldn’t be managed by the Park Service. It wouldn’t be public. It wouldn’t be a park.
