A senior White Home official on Friday stated President Trump’s request to reopen Alcatraz at a reported $2 billion price ticket appears “extreme.”
The determine “sounds extreme, however finally it’s as much as the President to determine,” the official informed NewsNation, The Hill’s sister station.
Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi and Inside Secretary Doug Burgum toured the island that homes the complicated in San Francisco Bay on Thursday to judge the state of the previous most safety jail, which was closed in 1963.
“We’re nonetheless within the early phases,” one administration official informed Axios.
“We want much more research, much more specificity, earlier than the president decides,” they stated. “However $2 billion may simply be an excessive amount of cash for him.”
The Trump administration has not confirmed that the undertaking prices.
Axios reported on Friday that the president is assessing whether or not to pour $2 billion into an entire renovation of the positioning, make investments $1 billion into partial reconstruction efforts that might not occupy the complete island or enable personal contractors to bid on the undertaking.
The latter measure was used to safe the Delaney Hall Detention Center in New Jersey for federal immigration operations. The Federal Emergency Administration Company’s (FEMA) Shelter and Companies Program additionally just lately funded the opening of the “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention heart within the Florida Everglades.
The White Home and Inside Division didn’t instantly reply to The Hill’s request for touch upon potential developments on the California jail managed by the Nationwide Park Service.
The Justice Division pointed The Hill to feedback made on-line by Bondi and Burgum following their journey to the jail.
“In @POTUS’ America, regulation and order will likely be totally enforced, and right this moment’s go to to Alcatraz with @AGPamBondi marked a robust step towards making certain harmful criminals are held accountable and People stay protected,” the Inside secretary wrote on social platform X, whereas sharing images from the go to. Bondi posted the same message.
Trump introduced in Could that he directed the administration to start work to reopen the jail, which the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) stated was closed as a result of excessive prices.
“REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too lengthy, America has been affected by vicious, violent, and repeat Legal Offenders, the dregs of society, who won’t ever contribute something aside from Distress and Struggling,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on the time.
“Once we had been a extra severe Nation, in instances previous, we didn’t hesitate to lock up essentially the most harmful criminals, and preserve them far-off from anybody they might hurt,” he added. “That’s the way in which it’s imagined to be.”
The initiative has sparked some backlash, primarily from Democrats together with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who represents San Francisco.
“With stiff competitors, the deliberate announcement to reopen Alcatraz as a federal penitentiary is the Trump Administration’s stupidest initiative but,” Pelosi wrote in a statement. “It ought to concern us all that clearly the one mental sources the Administration has drawn upon for this silly notion are decades-old fictional Hollywood motion pictures.”
She continued, saying “it stays to be seen how this Administration may presumably afford to spend billions to transform and preserve Alcatraz as a jail when they’re already including trillions of {dollars} to the nationwide debt with their sinful regulation,” a reference to the newly signed “large, lovely invoice.”
“Ought to cause not prevail and Republicans convey this absurdity earlier than the Congress, Democrats will use each parliamentary and budgetary tactic out there to cease the lunacy,” the previous Democratic chief added.