New York – President Donald Trump says he has revolved instructions to his government to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the famous prison located on an island of difficult access near San Francisco, which has remained closed for more than 60 years.
Trump published on its social media platform Truth Social that: “The United States has been plagued for too much time of violent criminals and repeat offenders, the waste of society, which will never contribute nothing more than misery and suffering. when we were a more serious nation, in past times, we did not hesitate to enclose the most dangerous criminals and keep them away from anyone who could cause damage. be”.
“That is why, today,” he added, “I am instructing the Prison Office, together with the Department of Justice, the FBI and national Security, so that an Alcatraz prison is reopened with significant extensions and reconstructions to house the most ruthless and violent criminals in the United States.”
Trump’s order for the reconstruction and reopening of a penitentiary center that was closed a long time ago represents the most recent attack in his efforts to reform the way and place where federal prisoners and detained migrants are imprisoned.
However, such a movement could be a expensive and complicated proposal. The prison was closed in 1963 due to the deterioration of infrastructure and high repair costs and supply of the island installation, since everything, from fuel to food, had to be taken by boat.
Modernizing the facilities would require huge investments at a time when the prison office has been closing prison centers due to similar infrastructure problems.
The prison, which was recognized as a place that it was impossible to escape due to the strong ocean currents and the cold pacific waters that surround it, was known as “La Roca” and housed some of the most famous criminals in the country, including the Ganaster Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
For a long time it has been part of the cultural imagination and has been the theme of numerous films, including “The Rock”, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.
Even so, in the 29 years that remained in operations, 36 men made 14 attempts to escape separately, according to the FBI. Almost all were captured or did not survive the attempt.
The destiny of three inmates in particular – John Anglin, his brother Clarence and Frank Morris – is the subject of a certain debate and was the theme of the movie “Escape from Alcatraz” of 1979, starring Clint Eastwood.
The island of Alcatraz is currently an important tourist site operated by the National Parks service and is designated as a historical national monument.
On his trip back to the White House on Sunday night, after spending a weekend in Florida, Trump said he came up with the idea due to his frustration with the “radicalized judges” who have insisted that those who are being deported receive due process. Alcatraz, he said, has long been a “law and order symbol. You know, it has enough history.”
A spokesman for the Prison Office said in a statement that the agency “complies all presidential orders.” The spokesman did not immediately answer the questions of The Associated Press about how practical and viable it is to reopen Alcatraz or the role of the agency in the future of the former prison, taking into account the control of the national parks service on the island.
The former president of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat for California whose district includes the island, questioned the viability of reopening the prison after so many years. “Now it is a very popular national park and a great tourist attraction. The president’s proposal is not serious,” he wrote in X.
The island serves as a true time machine to a past correctional era. The prison office currently has 16 prison centers that perform the same high security functions as Alcatraz, including its maximum security installation in Florence, Colorado, and the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which houses the federal death chamber.
The order occurs at a time when Trump has had marked differences with the courts as part of his attempt to send gang members to a maximum security prison in El Salvador without due process. Trump has also raised the legally doubtful idea of sending some federal prisoners of the United States to the Center for Confinement of Terrorism, known as Cecot, in the Central American Nation.
Trump has also ordered the opening of a detention center in Bahía de Guantanamo, Cuba, to house up to 30,000 of what qualifies as the “worst foreign criminals.”
The Prison Office has faced countless crises in recent years and has been the subject of a greater analysis after the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein in a federal prison in New York City in 2019. An AP investigation revealed significant failures that had not been previously reported within dependence. AP investigations have revealed generalized criminal activity by employees, dozens of leaks, chronic violence, deaths and a serious shortage of personnel who have hindered emergency response, including aggressions and suicides.
The AP investigation also presented an overflowing sexual abuse inside a federal prison for women in Dublin, California. President Joe Biden promulgated a law last year that strengthens the agency’s supervision after AP reports exposed many of their defects.
At the same time, the prison office operates in a state of change, with a new recently installed director and a redefined mission that includes receiving thousands of immigrants arrested in some of their prisons and prisons as part of an agreement with the Department of National Security. The agency closed several facilities last year, in part to reduce costs, but is also in the process of building a new prison in Kentucky.
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Sisak reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press Gary Fields journalists in Washington, Aamer Madhani, at West Palm Beach, Florida, and Michael Balmamo, in New York, contributed to this office.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
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