After floating the idea of reopening a shuttered federal prison on Alcatraz Island, President Donald Trump tasked two of his Cabinet members to see it for themselves last week. His anti-immigration agenda is at odds with efforts in recent decades to honor the site’s Indigenous history.
The National Park Service has been stewarding the 22-acre island sitting in the San Francisco Bay since 1972, which now attracts more than a million tourists and $60 million in revenue annually.
But that could all change.
“This was part of the Bureau of Federal Prisons, and returning it to that purpose is relatively straightforward compared to a lot of transactions with federal land,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News, with Attorney General Pam Bondi adding “It could hold illegal aliens, it could hold anything. This is a terrific facility, needs a lot of work.”
His predecessor under Biden, Deb Haaland, also visited that very island back in 2021.
“Like many of the public lands and the care of the Department of the Interior, these lands tell a story, and you can feel it,” Haaland explained. “Some may think Alcatraz Island as a place that movies and novels have described, where prisoners were kept in cells and tried to escape. But for me, and for many Indigenous people, this land tells another story.”
Nineteen Hopi men were imprisoned there in 1895, punished for refusing to send their children to boarding schools. A 19-month occupation occurred seven decades later between 1969 and 1971.
“We took Alcatraz because it was bringing Indian land back into Indian custody,” said 79-year-old LaNada War Jack, who is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes from Idaho. “Meant a lot to me and to a lot of our people.”
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