On Friday, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, criticized President Donald Trump’s plan to reopen Alcatraz Island as a prison after Trump requested $152 million in a 2027 federal budget request to cover first-year costs.
A news release issued by Wiener’s office said that the total cost of the project to reopen Alcatraz would be $2 billion.
“Trump’s idiotic quest to sink $2 billion into ruining a globally popular tourist attraction is the epitome of waste, fraud, and abuse,” Wiener said. “Trump’s dementia continues to get the best of him. Making Alcatraz a prison again isn’t a thing, and we’re not going to let him turn Alcatraz into his newest gulag. Back off.”
In 2025, Trump floated the idea of converting Alcatraz from a popular tourist destination in the middle of the Bay back into a prison.
Soon afterward, administration officials paid a surprise visit to Alcatraz, a move that many Bay Area political leaders, including Wiener, opposed.
U.S. Penitentiary Alcatraz closed in 1963 after opening 29 years earlier on the island in San Francisco Bay. Known as “The Rock,” it housed some of the most infamous criminals of its time, including Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
After its closure and a period of occupation by American Indians, Alcatraz has since turned into a tourist attraction with more than a million visitors a year to the public museum about the history of the island and its prison, according to the National Park Service.