United States of Alcatraz
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
United States of Alcatraz
by William Kristol
Will July 1, 2025 be a date that will live in infamy?
Probably not. There are too many competitors, too many other dates in recent months and years that have been signposts on our descent toward authoritarianism and indecency, too many other markers of national decline, for this one day to stand out all that much.
Still, yesterday packed quite a one-two punch.
The Senate passed a massive budget reconciliation bill that stands out, probably more than any other recent piece of legislation, for comforting the very comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski hastened to say after the bill passed. It’s “not good enough” for our nation, and it’s the product of “an awful process—a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline.”
Of course Murkowski told us this after having cast the deciding vote for the bill.
In addition to cutting health care for the poor and providing tax relief for the rich, the legislation provided massive funding increases for the federal agencies carrying out the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant obsession. The bill adds a total of $170.7 billion to immigration enforcement. It roughly triples the annual detention and enforcement budgets for the masked men of Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the next four years.
And according to our vice president, JD Vance, this was the point of it all: “Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
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All those people losing health insurance? “Minutiae.” “Immaterial.” Mass detention and deportation are what matters. They’re not only key to Making America Great Again, they’re what it means to Make America Great Again. That’s the MAGA dream: Finally getting rid of all those foreigners seeking refuge and opportunity here, in our land.
And mass detention and deportation are also key to advancing the other point of it all: authoritarianism. That’s the other part of the MAGA dream: Finally getting rid of all those annoying features of due process and the rule of law, all those restraints of civility and decency, that have kept us from doing what we want.
And so, while his vice president was breaking the tied vote in the Senate, Donald Trump was celebrating a new detention facility in the Florida Everglades. It’s a physical manifestation and apt symbol of the MAGA dream. How proud they all were of its clever name—“Alligator Alcatraz”—and the collection of tents filled with cages to hold immigrants.
The name is of course unfair to the original Alcatraz , a maximum-security, minimum-privilege penitentiary prison that operated from 1933 to 1963. That Alcatraz housed about 275 criminals convicted of serious crimes who were considered—and in many cases, had proven themselves—the most incorrigible inmates in the federal prison system.
Trump’s version of Alcatraz isn’t for a few hundred convicted and hardened criminals. It’s meant to hold thousands of undocumented immigrants, most of whom will have committed no crimes.
And there won’t be only one such facility. Trump was asked yesterday whether he wanted to see many more like it. His answer was straightforward: “Well, I think we’d like to see them in many states, really, many states. This one, I know [Florida Gov.] Ron [Desantis]’s doing a second one, at least a second one, and probably a couple of more. And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system where you’re going to keep it for a long time.”
Massive detention facilities for immigrants convicted of no crime en route to their deportation to places they may have never been to: That’s the system Trump hopes we are going to keep for a long time.
Alcatraz—the real Alcatraz—was something we needed or thought we needed. Even the best nations need prisons. So far as I know, American presidents didn’t chortle about our prisons or hold them up as what America was all about. Alcatraz was an object of curiosity, a unique prison on an island in San Francisco Bay.
The island American presidents once touted as what America was all about is on the other coast. It’s called Liberty Island, and its most notable feature isn’t a prison. It’s been the home for almost a century and a half to a statue, the Statue of Liberty. Its official name is The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World .
“Liberty enlightening the world.” How quaint. Do we still believe in that?
After yesterday, let’s not kid ourselves.
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Can "The Gulf Of Alcatraz" tee shirts be far behind ?
Trump said yesterday that he envisions "Alligator Alcatraz" type facilities all over the country. And now they've given that possibility the funding to realize it.
Ok but I hope he realizes that alligators are only found in the Southeastern US. We have some here in Arkansas and I know there are some as far north as North Carolina but really, it limits "Alligator Alcatrazes" to just a few states.
They could build Grizzly Bear Alcatrazes in Wyoming and California
well in fairness to trump he probably realizes alligators are only in a few places. he is talking about harsh prisons that cannot be escaped from.
the point is we are about to see what we have been watching for the last 5 months, but now on steroids.
that got a snort out of me , Ca has no grizz that i know of anymore , though i could be wrong , Wyo has a state prison that could already qualify , located in Rawlins , the prison sets about 15 miles from the town proper , is surrounded by nothing but sagebrush and oil and gas wells , which have a habit of belching out "sour gas", you smell almonds and your already dead . considering the weather ( seriously snow in june ? ) and the unbearable heat in the summer months , to traverse to anyplace that resembles humanity or civilization is over a 100 mile trek in any direction ,Rawlins is a cop town where prison staff lives so going there , isnt a good idea.
hunh...CA has no more grizzlies? Then they should remove it from their flag.
Another place would be Alaska. Just about anywhere in Alaska
I just looked it up on wiki , seems the bear depicted on the state flag of Ca , is a California grizzly , which is listed as extinct .
still