Alcatraz Island has abruptly closed its doors to tourists just weeks after President Trump demanded over $150 million to reopen the infamous prison.
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary – which sits in the water near San Francisco – closed for good as an operating prison in 1963 and now welcomes around 1.2 million visitors per year, according to the National Park Service. Now, on the NPS’s website, an alert says that the closure began on Monday and will last until Friday.
“Access to the island is temporarily closed for dock repair,” the warning reads. “All scheduled tours have been refunded.”
In an email obtained by SFGATE, Joshua Winchell, the park’s communications chief, said that the closure was “planned” and “pre-scheduled.” The work will be carried out “specifically to repair and inspect the dock pilings.”
The Trump administration has long expressed interest in reopening a prison on Alcatraz Island, and the White House released a 2027 budget proposal earlier this year that seeks $152 million to restore the facility.
In May 2025, the president lauded the prison’s infamous reputation on Truth Social and suggested housing “vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society” in a reopened prison on the island.
“That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” his post read.
“We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom tore into the idea at the time, claiming that nothing about the plans “makes any sense.”
“I don’t know if he’s watching ‘The Rock’ or what inspired this,” Newsom told CBS Sacramento. “I mean, you can’t even come up with a more colossally bad fiscal idea. Nothing about this makes any sense.”
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Newsom went on to claim that Trump’s plan has “the form and substance of the stuff that flows in and out of the bay over Alcatraz every day: fog.”
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also described the proposal as “stupid” and an “insult to the intelligence of the American people,” in a Facebook post.
In July 2025, then Attorney General Pam Bondi and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited the facility to investigate the possibility of reopening the site.
Alcatraz closed in 1963 because of high operational costs, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The facility was three times as expensive to operate as other federal prisons because of its isolation on an island. Because of its location, all supplies had to be brought by boat, including nearly 1 million gallons of water per week.
The Independent has contacted the National Park Service for comment.
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