Newsom’s Office Skeptical About Reopening Alcatraz Amid Bondi’s Visit

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s staff expressed skepticism about reopening Alcatraz as a federal prison following U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s visit to the historic tourist attraction. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the idea “stupid.”

But President Donald Trump and his supporters said the San Francisco Bay island could hold America’s worst criminals again.

Alcatraz, which held infamous prisoners such as gangster Al Capone, closed in 1963 because of its high operating costs, including transporting fresh water and other supplies by boat. It was almost three times more expensive to operate than other federal prisons, according to the History Channel. In 1972, the site became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the public began visiting it in 1973. The National Park Service oversees the island, where rangers have given talks and tourists have had their photos taken inside the cells in the aging facility. The 19th-century buildings are decaying, and nothing remains of the warden’s mansion but a concrete shell.

“Pam Bondi will reopen Alcatraz the same day Trump lets her release the Epstein files. So … never,” Newsom’s press office posted Thursday on X.

Ironically, after bipartisan pressure grew to release those files, Trump ordered Bondi to release grand jury documents in the sex-trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein, whose death in 2019 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City was ruled a suicide by a medical examiner and the U.S. Justice Department inspector general.

Bondi, who said she would release the files, traveled to Alcatraz Thursday on a Coast Guard boat with Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum.