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      Not just Alcatraz: the notorious US prisons Trump is already reopening

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      Donald Trump’s proposal to reopen Alcatraz, the infamous prison shuttered more than 60 years ago, sparked global headlines over the weekend. But it isn’t the only notorious closed-down jail or prison the administration has sought to repurpose for mass detentions.The US government has in recent months pushed to reopen at least five other shuttered detention facilities and prisons, some closed amid concerns over safety and mistreatment of detainees. While California lawmakers swiftly dismissed the Alcatraz announcement as “not serious” and a distraction, the Trump administration’s efforts to reopen other scandal-plagued facilities are well under way or already complete, in partnership with for-profit prison corporations.The shuttered prisons are being revived for immigration detainees, unlike the US president’s purported plan for Alcatraz, which he claimed on social media would imprison “America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders”.US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has sought to reopen the California city correctional facility, a state prison in the southern California desert region that closed last year, according to government contract records. The facility is owned by CoreCivic, a longtime Ice detention partner, and previously housed more than 2,000 people.California Democrats have also warned that Ice was interested in reopening Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Dublin, a US prison shuttered last year amid scandals surrounding systemic sexual abuse by staff, and concerns about mold and asbestos. The correctional officers’ union has reported that staff were recently forced to do maintenance work at Dublin in hazardous conditions, seemingly to prepare for a reopening, but Ice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP), which runs Dublin, have not commented on plans.Communities in California, the country’s most populous state and home to nearly a quarter of immigrants in the US, have long opposed Ice detention centers, and there are currently no Ice jails in the state north of Bakersfield in the Central Valley, said Susan Beaty, senior attorney for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.View image in fullscreen“When there are fewer beds for Ice to incarcerate people, there are fewer arrests and less enforcement,” said Beaty, who represents people in Ice and BoP detention. “We don’t want Ice to expand their ability to cage our community members, because we know that will lead to more incarceration and allow them to terrorize our communities even further.”In rural Lake county, Michigan, Geo Group, another prison corporation, is reopening the closed North Lake correctional facility, which has capacity for 1,800 people and would be the largest immigration detention center in the midwest, according to the local news site MLive.com. Over the years, the facility has housed imprisoned teenage boys, out-of-state incarcerated people and immigrants. But it has sat dormant since it closed in 2022 under the Biden administration.In 2020, detainees at North Lake went on a hunger strike, alleging they were denied access to their mail and religiously appropriate food, their complaint paperwork was destroyed, and they were placed in extended solitary confinement. Geo Group denied the claims at the time.In Newark, New Jersey, Geo Group has recently reopened the closed Delaney Hall facility for immigration detainees even as the company faces a pending lawsuit from the city alleging it failed to file required construction permits or allow inspectors inside, according to news site NorthJersey.com.“They are following the pattern of the president … who believes that he can just do what he wants to do and obscure the laws,” Newark’s mayor, Ras Baraka, said on Monday.Christopher Ferreira, a Geo Group spokesperson, said in an email that the firm had a “valid certificate of occupancy” and complied with health and safety requirements. The mayor’s opposition was “another unfortunate example of a politicized campaign by sanctuary city and open borders politicians in New Jersey to interfere with the federal government”, he added.In a December 2024 earnings call, Geo Group said it was in “active discussions” with Ice and the US Marshals Service about their interest in six of its facilities that were idle.In Leavenworth, Kansas, CoreCivic is working to reopen an immigration detention center closed in 2021 under Joe Biden. The proposal for the Midwest Regional Reception Center (MRRC) has sparked backlash from the city of Leavenworth, which sued CoreCivic in March, alleging the company has not followed the proper permitting protocols.View image in fullscreenIn 2021, the ACLU alleged that the Leavenworth facility was beset by problems, including frequent stabbings, suicides and contraband, and that “basic human needs [were] not being met”, with food restricted, contact with counsel and family denied or curtailed, limited medical care and infrequent showers. A federal judge called the facility a “hellhole”.Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesperson, defended the company’s decades of operations in Leavenworth in an email on Monday, saying understaffing amid the pandemic “was the main contributor to the challenges” and “the issues were concentrated in about an 18-month period”: “We’re grateful for a more stable labor market post-pandemic, and we’ve had a positive response with nearly 1,400 [applicants] expressing interest in one of the 300 positions the facility will create.“At any of our facilities, including MRRC, we don’t cut corners on care, staff or training, which meets, and in many cases exceeds, our government partners’ standards,” he said. He also pointed to a recent op-ed by the warden, who argued the facility “is and always has been properly zoned”.CoreCivic also reopened a family detention center in Texas last month.The use of shuttered prisons is just one way Ice is expanding detention for Trump’s mass deportations. He has also moved immigration detainees into BoP facilities currently housing criminal defendants, causing concerns about poor conditions, rights violations and a lack of basic resources as staff manage multiple populations under one roof. Trump has also pushed to expand local jail contracts and use military bases for Ice.Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, which has obtained public records on Ice’s expanding detention, said Ice was ignoring safety concerns in previously shuttered facilities.“This is a continuing pattern of the Trump administration’s willingness to knowingly place immigrants in detention facilities already well-known for having dangerous conditions,” she said. “They’re putting people in facilities where the conditions are so dire … that people simply give up their valid claims of relief to stay in the United States.”There is growing local backlash to these facilities, Cho added: “When people realize what is happening in these facilities, it’s not something they want to see up close. People are becoming very aware that billions of dollars are being spent to enrich private prison companies to hold people in abysmal conditions … including their neighbors, co-workers and friends.”Ice did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.Donald Murphy, a BoP spokesperson, did not answer questions about the reported reopening of Dublin for Ice. William K Marshall III, BoP director, said in a statement that the bureau would “vigorously pursue all avenues to support and implement the president’s agenda” and had ordered an “immediate assessment” to determine “our needs and the next steps” for Alcatraz: “We look forward to restoring this powerful symbol of law, order, and justice.”Corene Kendrick, ACLU National Prison Project deputy director, dismissed Trump’s Alcatraz statement as a “stunt”, noting that the prison’s cellblock has no running water or sewage and limited electricity.“I don’t know if we can call it a ‘proposal’, because that implies actual thought was put into it,” she said. “It’s completely far-fetched and preposterous, and it would be impossible to reopen those ancient, crumbling buildings as anything resembling a functioning prison.” More

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      in Elections

      Trump Says He Wants Alcatraz Restored as a Prison

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      The project would be extraordinarily expensive at a time when the administration already plans to cut billions of dollars from the Justice Department’s budget.President Trump said on Sunday that he wanted federal law enforcement agencies to work on restoring Alcatraz, now a museum, to a functioning maximum-security prison.Repeating one of his constant refrains that the United States had become a dangerous, lawless place, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that he wanted Alcatraz, an island in San Francisco Bay, to be enlarged and rebuilt “to house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders. We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our country illegally.”It was not immediately clear how his musing could be put into action, given that any such project would be extraordinarily expensive and that the administration already planned to cut billions of dollars from the Justice Department budget.Mr. Trump said he had instructed the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department to work on his idea, along with the F.B.I. — a curious choice given that the bureau plays no role in incarcerating people convicted of crimes.A reopened Alcatraz, Mr. Trump wrote, would “serve as a symbol of law, order, and justice.” The prison captured the public imagination as the home of the “worst of the worst” until it was closed in 1963 and eventually turned into a popular museum attraction.In addition to holding the gangster known as “Machine Gun Kelly” and Al Capone — whose multiple indictments Mr. Trump often mentioned on the campaign trail to describe himself as unfairly persecuted — Alcatraz is most famous for the escape of three men in 1962. They were never found, and it remains unclear whether they survived the swim from the island, which is more than a mile from shore in cold water with strong currents. Today, Alcatraz is best known as a damp, frigid and nostalgic staple of tourist packages and children’s field trips.By comparison, the current federal super-maximum security prison in Florence, Colo., has never had an inmate escape.In California, Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator representing San Francisco, called Mr. Trump’s idea “absurd on its face” and the latest example of what he called the president’s “continuing unhinged behavior.”A spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom laughed when asked about the president’s order. “Looks like it’s Distraction Day again in Washington, D.C.,” Izzy Gardon, the governor’s director of communications, said.Mr. Gardon pointed out that it had been more than six decades since Alcatraz operated as a prison, and that turning it back into a facility to house inmates would take many years and significant federal investment at a time when the president has said he wants to slash spending.Maggie Haberman More

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      in Elections

      Bob Filner, Mayor of San Diego Who Left Amid Scandal, Dies at 82

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      A progressive member of Congress for two decades, he resigned as mayor after 18 women accused him of sexual harassment.Bob Filner, a progressive Democrat who served two decades in Congress and then successfully ran for mayor of San Diego, promising to shake up City Hall — but whose career imploded within months amid a storm of sexual harassment charges — died on April 20. He was 82.His family announced the death. The announcement did not give a cause or say where he died, but The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that he died in an assisted living home in Costa Mesa, Calif.Mr. Filner, who was known for his brash and combative style, resigned as mayor under pressure in August 2013, after 18 women accused him of sexual misconduct in his time as mayor and during his years in Congress.The women included a retired Navy rear admiral, a university dean and Mr. Filner’s former communications director, who said that Mr. Filner had told her he wanted to see her naked and asked her to work without underwear.He left office denying any wrongdoing. But two months later, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of false imprisonment and misdemeanor charges of battery involving two other women. He was sentenced to three months’ home confinement and three years’ probation.“I never intended to be a mayor who went out like this,” he said.Mr. Filner, when he was the mayor of San Diego, at a news conference in July 2013 at which he apologized for his conduct toward women. He would resign the next month.Fred Greaves/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      University of California’s New President, James Milliken, Will Come From Texas

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      James B. Milliken will lead the California system, relinquishing his position as the chancellor of the University of Texas system.The University of California system announced on Friday that its new president would be James B. Milliken, a longtime public university leader who currently serves at the University of Texas system and previously ran the City University of New York and the University of Nebraska.At a fraught time in higher education, Mr. Milliken, 68, is regarded as an experienced and relatively safe choice to lead the nation’s most prestigious public university system.Mr. Milliken, known as JB, will take over the system of nearly 300,000 students at a time when the Trump administration is targeting the nation’s elite universities — and has the U.C. system in its cross hairs. All 10 University of California campuses are under investigation by the administration for various reasons, including admissions practices and allegations of antisemitism.So far, the California system has escaped some of the deep federal funding cuts the White House has announced that it was imposing at other universities. The system does, however, face a proposed cut of about 8 percent in its share of the state budget, as California seeks to manage a projected long-term deficit.In announcing Mr. Milliken’s selection, the University of California Board of Regents said that the new president “understands how critical U.C.’s contributions are to the state and the country, and he has decades of experience leading public institutions during times of unprecedented change in higher education.”Highlighting Mr. Milliken’s commitment to low-income students, the regents referred to his stewardship of the City University of New York system, where he served from 2014 to 2018.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      House Votes to Block California Plan to Ban New Gas-Powered Cars in 2035

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      Republicans, joined by a handful of Democrats, voted to eliminate California’s electric vehicle policy, which had been adopted by 11 other states.The House on Thursday voted to bar California from imposing its landmark ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, the first step in an effort by the Republican majority to stop a state policy designed to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.The 246-to-164 vote came a day after Republicans, joined by a few Democrats, voted to block California from requiring dealers in the state to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission, medium and heavy-duty trucks over time. And, lawmakers also voted on Wednesday to stop a state effort to reduce California’s levels of smog.All three policies were implemented under permissions granted to California by the Biden administration. They pose an extraordinary challenge to California’s longstanding authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act to set pollution standards that are more strict than federal limits.And the legality of the congressional action is in dispute. Two authorities, the Senate parliamentarian and the Government Accountability Office, have ruled that Congress cannot revoke the waivers.California leaders condemned the actions and promised a battle.Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, called the move “lawless” and an attack on states’ rights. “Trump Republicans are hellbent on making California smoggy again,” Governor Newsom said in a statement.“Clean air didn’t used to be political,” he said, adding, “The only thing that’s changed is that big polluters and the right-wing propaganda machine have succeeded in buying off the Republican Party.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      How California Sanctuary Policies Are Faring Under Pressure From Trump

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      State and city officials in California are vowing to uphold protections for immigrants, even as President Trump threatens more action against their jurisdictions.In 1971, Berkeley, Calif., became the first place in the nation to deem itself a sanctuary city, at the time to provide refuge for sailors who protested the Vietnam War.Today, at least 25 cities and counties in California have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants by passing laws that limit how much they will cooperate with federal efforts to deport people.Those policies could soon make California a greater target for the Trump administration as federal officials try to punish governments with sanctuary policies.President Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Monday night directing federal officials to publish a list of all jurisdictions that have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants in the United States. It is unclear how Mr. Trump intends to use the list, but it is possible that he may try to cut funding or take legal action against the governments that are identified.California has long been home to more undocumented immigrants than any other state and currently has about 1.8 million undocumented residents, according to the Pew Research Center. Amid threats of mass deportations during Mr. Trump’s first term, California declared itself a sanctuary state in 2017.Here is how local policies in California are playing out during the second Trump administration:What does it mean to be a sanctuary?Oakland, Sacramento and San Diego are among the California cities that have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for undocumented immigrants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Canadian Snowbirds Bought Into the American Dream in Palm Springs. Was It a Mirage?

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      On the night of the 2024 presidential election, Ken James, a retired engineer from Calgary, Alberta, was at his second home in Palm Springs, Calif., watching with dismay as the results rolled in.Mr. James, 68, called his wife back in Calgary. “If he gets back in, I’m selling,” he recalled her saying of Donald Trump.Mr. James is among hundreds of thousands of Canadians, many of them snowbirds, who each year flock to Palm Springs, a sunbaked resort city about 110 miles east of Los Angeles that is known for its midcentury architecture, otherworldly desert and art scene. For nearly five months a year, when temperatures are often below freezing in Calgary, Mr. James and his wife spend languid days by the pool, hike sweeping canyons and enjoy live music beneath the stars at the local saloon.But in recent months — as President Trump has announced a 25 percent tariff on certain Canadian goods and threatened the nation’s sovereignty — they and other Canadians are reconsidering their future in Palm Springs. The trend is part of a broader slump in tourism as international travelers say they feel unwelcome in the United States.Two Canadian airlines recently slashed flights to Palm Springs International Airport, citing a drop in demand.Joyce Lee for The New York TimesIn Palm Springs, some are selling or abandoning plans to buy vacation homes. Others are canceling trips or cutting their winter visits short.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More