President Donald Trump wants to reopen Alcatraz, a long-closed former prison on a small island off the coast of San Francisco.
As the Trump administration steps up its efforts to secure the border and deport illegal aliens, especially criminal illegal aliens, the president has ordered the Bureau of Prisons and several other departments to work together to reopen the famed prison.
“Well, we need detention beds,” border czar Tom Homan said Monday when asked about Trump’s plan for the prison, adding that the use of Alcatraz to detain arrested illegal aliens “should be on the table.”
From the time it opened in the 1930s to being shut down in the 1960s due to high operational costs, Alcatraz housed some of America’s worst criminals, including Al Capone.
Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump said the prison represents “something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order.”
Gregg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst, said the prison is federal property so reopening it “can be done,” but told “Fox & Friends” on Monday that “it’d have to be rebuilt almost entirely.”
“And here’s the important part,” Jarrett continued, “it has landmark status. So, there would be an avalanche of lawsuits that would probably tie it up for years. Don’t forget, this is California.”
Amid ongoing efforts to secure the border, Trump says he offered to send U.S. troops to Mexico.
Trump has designated Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and other gangs as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and confirmed on Air Force One on Sunday night that he offered to send U.S. troops to Mexico to combat the cartels, but Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum declined the offer.
Speaking in Mexico City over the weekend, Sheinbaum said she told Trump, “no,” when he offered to send troops to Mexico, adding, “[s]overeignty is not for sale. Sovereignty is loved and defended.”
Sheinbaum is “a lovely women,” Trump said Sunday, “but she is so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight.”
When Homan spoke with reporters outside the White House on Monday, he was asked about Trump’s offer to send U.S. troops to Mexico and said the drug cartels have “killed more Americans than ISIS or any other terrorist group.”
“They’re terrorist organizations, and we need to treat them like terrorist organizations,” he said.
Drug overdose and poisoning deaths are now the No. 1 killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, according to the Center Disease Control and Prevention.
While Customs and Border Protection encounters with illegal aliens along the border have seen a dramatic decline since Trump took office in January, drug seizures remain high.
In March, CBP says, it seized 21,900 pounds of drugs at or between ports of entry along the southern border. Though a decline from March 2024, when CBP seized 27,800 pounds of drugs at the southern border, the flow still poses a significant threat to American lives.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
