President Donald Trump on Sunday mentioned he needs to reopen the Alcatraz jail in San Francisco, to accommodate “America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders”—an asinine concept that critics say will value an absurd amount of cash.
In a Sunday evening publish on Reality Social, Trump wrote:
REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too lengthy, America has been stricken by vicious, violent, and repeat Prison Offenders, the dregs of society, who won’t ever contribute something aside from Distress and Struggling. After we had been a extra severe Nation, in instances previous, we didn’t hesitate to lock up probably the most harmful criminals, and maintain them distant from anybody they might hurt. That’s the best way it’s alleged to be. Not will we tolerate these Serial Offenders who unfold filth, bloodshed, and mayhem on our streets. That’s the reason, in the present day, I’m directing the Bureau of Prisons, along with the Division of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Safety, to reopen a considerably enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to accommodate America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders. We are going to now not be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges which might be afraid to do their job and permit us to take away criminals, who got here into our Nation illegally. The reopening of ALCATRAZ will function an emblem of Regulation, Order, and JUSTICE. We are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Trump’s plan to reopen Alcatraz is imbecilic. The jail was closed in March 1963 due to its crumbling infrastructure, and even then it was too costly to function, as all provides wanted to run the ability needed to be introduced in by boat.
“For example, the island had no source of fresh water, so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week. The Federal Government found that it was more cost-effective to build a new institution than to keep Alcatraz open,” the Federal Bureau of Prisons wrote in a publish in regards to the historical past of the ability.
Even when it was a jail, three individuals notoriously escaped from its partitions—so it’s not like Alcatraz is a few impenetrable fortress.
And making it operational once more as a result of Trump—a convicted felon in his personal proper—thinks Alcatraz seems like a scary place to place criminals is prohibitively costly, because it hasn’t operated as a spot to accommodate prisoners in additional than 60 years and would require hundreds of thousands in renovations.
“If the discussion is to rebuild the prison building to hold people, I don’t think that would be feasible,” John Martini, an skilled on Alcatraz, instructed the San Francisco Chronicle. “It would have to be torn down and rebuilt.”
What’s extra, Alcatraz now serves as a public landmark operated by the Nationwide Park Service, incomes greater than $60 million yearly, so making it a jail once more would lose cash for the federal authorities.
Democrats lambasted Trump’s concept.
“Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction. The President’s proposal is not a serious one,” former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco the place Alcatraz is positioned, wrote in a publish on X.
“Trump’s edict that Alcatraz—which is a museum—will be reopened as a prison is absurd on its face,” California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco, mentioned in a press release. “This major tourist attraction generates significant revenue for the federal government and supports many jobs.”
Wiener added, “But apart from Trump’s continuing unhinged behavior, this action is part of Trump’s ongoing crusade to sabotage the rule of law. He specifically points to judges who won’t let him deport whomever he wants without due process as justification for this stunt. If Trump is serious about doing this, it’s just one more step in his dismantling of democracy—a domestic gulag right in the middle of San Francisco Bay.”
Trump is obsessive about imprisoning individuals in horrid situations.
He is deported immigrants—a lot of them wrongly accused of being in gangs—to a Salvadoran gulag, and is now threatening to deport U.S. residents to the identical human rights abomination.
Trump can also be utilizing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp—the place prisoners had been infamously tortured throughout former President George W. Bush’s tenure—to home deported migrants.
And the Trump administration is now in talks with Rwanda to ship deported immigrants to prisons within the nation that just a few many years in the past carried out a horrifying genocide wherein a whole bunch of hundreds of individuals had been brutally murdered and raped.
In fact, on the identical time Trump has salivated about sending individuals to inhumane prisons, he has freed his supporters who had been convicted for crimes they dedicated on Jan. 6, 2021—once they broke into the U.S. Capitol to attempt to stop Joe Biden’s victory from being licensed—and has vowed to compensate them along with your tax {dollars}.
He is even hosted a few of these felons at his Mar-a-Lago resort, together with white supremacist and former Proud Boy chief Enrique Tarrio over the weekend—who had been serving a 22-year sentence for his crimes on Jan. 6 earlier than Trump commuted his sentence.
Now, as he says the USA is too poor to pay for most cancers analysis, climate forecasting, diet help for low-income People, and extra, he is able to spend doubtlessly a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands to create a gulag on American soil.
