Billions of dollars are needed to convert the physical plant into something useable as a prison, unless you are a seriously inhumane and awful kinda of prison designer. The place was shuttered in 1963 because it was too expensive to maintain,

"Pam Bondi will reopen Alcatraz the same day Trump lets her release the Epstein files. So, never," Izzy Gardon, Newsom's director of communications, told SFGATE. The high-profile visit comes two months after President Donald Trump floated the idea of reopening the long-shuttered penitentiary as a maximum-security prison.