Announcing his plans on Truth Social last year, Trump said was directing “the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ”.
The prison would “house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders”.
Alcatraz was originally a naval defence fort, before being converted first to a military prison and then to a federal prison in the 1930s after being taken over by the Department of Justice.
Some of its most notable inmates have included notorious gangsters Al Capone, Mickey Cohen and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
Alcatraz has served as a location in a number of films, notably 1962’s Birdman of Alcatraz, starring Burt Lancaster, 1979’s Escape from Alcatraz, starring Clint Eastwood, and 1996 film The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.
