Can Trump reopen Alcatraz? Experts see a problem there

In the fight against migrants and criminals, Donald Trump cannot be draconically enough. The US President regularly uses the topic to profile himself as a hard guy. He has deportations staged with martial pictures, ignores judgments and plans to convert the controversial prison camp Guantánamo Bay into a deportation prison.

Now Trump also wants to reactivate another icon of internal security: the once dreaded high -security prison Alcatraz in the Bay of San Francisco. “Rebuild, and Open Alcatraz!”, Trump wrote on Sunday in his social network Truth Social, accompanied by a tirade against criminals and judges who prevented the deportation of such.

America has been plagued for far too long by “malignant, violent and declining criminals, the scum of society, which will never produce anything other than misery and suffering,” wrote Trump. Therefore, he instructed the authorities to “reopen a significantly enlarged and converted Alcatraz in order to accommodate the most unscrupulous and violent offenders in America”. The reopening will serve as a “symbol of law, order and law”.

A world famous symbol is indeed Alcatraz. The former high -security prison on the tiny island in front of San Francisco once housed famousness such as Mafiaboss Al Capone and was considered a break -proof place. But it has long been just a museum for tourists. In 1963, prison was closed after almost three decades because the maintenance costs had become too high.

Since all things had to be brought up by boat, the costs per prison inmate were three times as high as in other prisons, writes the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the US prison authority. Among other things, a million gallon water (around 3.8 million liters) should have been released every week. In order to keep the prison open, it would also have needed a multi -million dollar renovation at that time.

According to experts, the dilapidated infrastructure would also make Trump’s reopening plans difficult. The building was “completely unable to function,” said historian John Martini to the “San Francisco Chronicle”. There is no water, no sewage system and only partially electricity. Some buildings are over 100 years old, says Martini. “When it comes to conversion the prison building for the accommodation of people, I don’t think so is feasible. It would have to be torn down and rebuilt”.

Such a new building should take many years and very expensive, said a spokesman for the California governor Gavin Newsom of the “New York Times”. Which in turn fits together with that the Trump administration actually wants to shorten state expenditure, including that of the Ministry of Justice.

The California Senator Scott Wiener, such as Newsom from the Democrats, also called Trump’s Alcatraz plans “absurd”. Alcatraz is a museum that gives the government significant income and secure many jobs. He described the Alcatraz plans as part of Trump’s crusade for the sabotage of the judiciary. A Gulag in the middle of the Bay of San Francisco is another step in Trump’s reduction in democracy.

It seems unclear whether Trump is seriously pursuing his Alcatraz fantasies or turns to other ideas tomorrow. At the request of the AP news agency, the US prison authority only said that “all orders of the President would be followed”. At first there was no Alcatraz arrangement on the Weißen House website.