A former inmate of Alcatraz who once swept the floors of America’s most infamous prison is brushing aside Donald Trump‘s bombshell plan to bring the facility back to life.
Charlie Hopkins, 93, is the last known living man to have worn the steel-gray uniform of Alcatraz, but even as a fervent Trump supporter he believes the president’s plan to reopen The Rock is just a bluff.
‘He don’t really want to open that place,’ Hopkins said speaking to the BBC from his home in Florida. ‘He’s just trying to get a point across to the public.’
When Trump declared he had ‘directed the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt Alcatraz‘, his words ignited a flurry online – particularly among critics.
The prison was shut down in 1963 and has been crumbling into San Francisco Bay ever since.
But Trump wrote last Sunday that he envisioned the notorious lockup would once again house ‘America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.’
Hopkins, who served time on the island from 1955 to 1958 for kidnapping and robbery, says he supports Trump but laughs off the idea of reviving a prison he calls ‘deader than the convicts it held.’
‘It would be so expensive,’ he said. ‘Back then, the sewage system went into the ocean. They’d have to come up with another way of handling that.
Charlie Hopkins, 93, the last known living man to have worn the steel-gray uniform of Alcatraz, believes the president’s explosive plan to reopen The Rock is just a bluff
Alcatraz was a maximum security federal prison off the coast of San Francisco which was closed in 1963 after 29 years of operation
‘You can’t go back in time,’ Hopkins added. ‘That place belongs to the past.’
The plan was rolled out by Trump earlier this month standing behind a podium draped in American flags.
He declared how ‘Alcatraz represents something very strong, very powerful – law and order.’
But experts, historians, and even some members of Trump’s inner circle have admitted that the proposal is less about incarceration and more about imagination.
‘I have two words: water and sewage,’ said Jolene Babyak, an author and Alcatraz historian who lived on the island as a child while her father served as prison administrator.
Others are even more blunt. ‘To be frank, at first I thought it was a joke,’ said Hugh Hurwitz, former acting director of the Bureau of Prisons. ‘You’d have to tear it up and start over.’
The island’s buildings are literally falling apart with no fencing, updated plumbing, or any real way to house prisoners in compliance with modern federal standards.
‘You can’t run a prison in a historic ruin,’ Hurwitz said.
Hopkins served time on the island from 1955 to 1958 for kidnapping and robbery
The inside of Alcatraz is seen here in August 1934
A typical prison cell at Alcatraz Prison is seen pictured in 1956
In a post shared to TruthSocial on Sunday night, Trump vowed ‘the reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE’
But for Trump, who has already begun to send gang members and has even proposed sending American criminals to foreign prisons like the one in El Salvador, symbolism is what matters most.
‘It sort of represents something that is both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable,’ he told reporters.
Democrats do not appear to be amused. Nancy Pelosi, whose district includes Alcatraz, dismissed the idea as unserious.
State Senator Scott Wiener called it ‘deeply unhinged’ and ‘an attack on the rule of law.’
For Charlie Hopkins, the controversy has stirred memories buried deep in the bedrock of Alcatraz Island.
He remembers the sound of ship whistles echoing across the bay – ‘a lonely sound,’ he said, that reminded him of the Hank Williams song ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.’
Hopkins landed on Alcatraz in 1955 after causing trouble at other prisons.
He had been part of a violent gang that used hostages to blow through police roadblocks and steal cars across Florida.
There were 1,576 prisoners held in Alcatraz over that time and it was notorious for its primative conditions
One of the guard towers on Alcatraz Island with the city of San Francisco in the background
After his release in 1963, Hopkins returned to Florida and led a quieter life, eventually writing a 1,000-page memoir
On the Rock, he scrubbed floors ‘until they shined,’ did push-ups in his tiny cell, and spent six months in D Block – solitary confinement – after helping smuggle hacksaw blades for a failed prison break.
‘There was nothing to do. You could walk back and forth in your cell or do push-ups,’ Hopkins recalled.
The ringleader of that escape, bank robber Forrest Tucker, would later stab himself with a pencil during a hospital visit to slip out of his restraints.
He was caught hours later in a cornfield wearing a hospital gown.
‘When I left there in 1958, the security was so tight you couldn’t breathe,’ Hopkins recalled.
He left Alcatraz five years before it closed and was transferred to a prison in Missouri, where he received psychiatric treatment.
After his release in 1963, he returned to Florida and led a quieter life, eventually writing a 1,000-page memoir.
The prison is now a museum and tourist attraction for visitors. Pictured: A National Park Service ranger walking through the old dining hall
A view of Alcatraz Island during sunrise in San Francisco, California,
Alcatraz is located 1.25 miles from shore and takes 15 minutes to reach by ferry
‘You wouldn’t believe the trouble I caused them when I was there,’ he said. ‘I can see now, looking back, that I had problems.’
More than 1.4 million people visit Alcatraz each year, walking its cellblocks, peering into rusted toilets, and snapping selfies beside the legendary steel bars.
The island museum generates roughly $60 million annually for the National Park Service. But for Trump, the prison is a symbol worth resurrecting even despite turning it back into a prison would require billions.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Alcatraz was nearly three times as expensive to operate as other facilities when it shut down – and that was before a half-century of saltwater decay set in.
‘You’d need water, electricity, heat, sanitation,’ said historian John Martini, who worked for years as a ranger on the island. ‘It’s basically a shell.’
