Scoop: Trump's new Alcatraz prison could cost $2 billion

President's Trump's audacious plan to convert Alcatraz back to a maximum- security prison could come with a hefty price tag: $2 billion, administration sources tell Axios.Why it matters: Trump's plan has been derided by Democrats, but the president is so intent on building a new prison on Alcatraz Island that administration officials have figured preliminary estimates of the costs and made repeated visits to site, the sources say.Attorney General Pam Bondi and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Thursday toured the island in San Francisco Bay.Bondi's department oversees the Bureau of Prisons, which would run the facility. Burgum's agency owns the land and manages the site — which has been a tourist attraction since 1973 — through the National Park Service.Zoom in: Two administration officials say Trump hasn't made a final decision on what he wants to do with the island, and it's unclear what the precise costs would be. As described to Axios, there are three general options on the table:A "supermax" prison complex that would cost more than $2 billion. It would require razing all of the island's decrepit structures and building from scratch.A scaled-back prison that would cost $1 billion and not occupy the entire island.Putting the project out to bid for private prison contractors to build and operate. This option is the least likely of the three, the sources said."We're still in the early stages," an administration official said. "We need a lot more study, a lot more specificity, before the president decides. But $2 billion might just be too much money for him."Another reason the most-expensive option might not be the choice: It would take too long to build, and Trump wants to do as much as possible while he's in office.Zoom out: Alcatraz closed as a prison in 1963, after less than 29 years in operation. It famously housed some of the federal prison system's most notorious criminals, including Chicago gangster Al Capone.The U.S. government closed the prison after deeming it too expensive to operate. The structures deteriorated quickly in the bay's saltwater environment, and food and water had to be brought to the prison, while waste had to be shipped out.Some in the administration also have noted that there's a healthy population of whales in the bay and there are worries that the boat traffic required for large-scale construction project on Alcatraz would interfere with them.Another argument against the project: The U.S. prison population — already one of the world's largest relative to the population — has been declining for years and is projected to decrease even more.The big picture: Trump's interest in Alcatraz is motivated more by symbolism than necessity, according to those who know his thinking. Alcatraz, featured in many movies, has a space in the cultural consciousness as a tough place, and the president likes that. "When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm," Trump wrote May 4 on Truth Social. "That's the way it's supposed to be."He likes it because it's tough," one adviser said. In that respect, an Alcatraz prison jives with the administration's messaging on immigration, which seeks to communicate such cruelty that migrants self-deport. Immigration enforcement is one of the few clear growth opportunities for the incarceration-industrial complex. Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" increased funding for immigration enforcement and could be a source of funding for a new Alcatraz if Trump moves forward with the idea.What they're saying: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat whose district includes Alcatraz, said in a statement that "the planned announcement to reopen Alcatraz as a federal penitentiary is the Trump administration's stupidest initiative yet.""It should concern us all that clearly the only intellectual resources the administration has drawn upon for this foolish notion are decades-old, fictional Hollywood movies," she said.When Trump first announced his idea for Alcatraz, Pelosi said it was "not serious."But the visits by Bondi and Burgum underscored the president's interest. "People thought it was a joke, an offhanded remark," another official said. "But the president is serious. And if he's serious, we're gonna do it."

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