'Alligator Alcatraz' is a temple to​ Trump's cruelty

Some 63 years and a week ago, a young attorney general named Robert F. Kennedy announced the closure of one of the world’s most infamous institutions.

Alcatraz.

RFK’s move was largely pragmatic. The Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was located on a remote island in San Francisco Bay that had no fresh water — a million gallons had to be barged to it every week. Its infrastructure was crumbling, exacerbating its many design flaws. It was a mess.

But over time, Alcatraz would become notorious not for inefficiency but as a dark chapter in U.S. history. The prison’s image as a grim monument to cruelty and isolation would become etched into public consciousness through iconic films like Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Murder in the First (1995), and even the action thriller The Rock (1996).

No wonder Donald Trump wants to reopen it.

Trump’s desecration of the nation demands rehabilitation of dark institutions such as Alcatraz, because to him they embody the strength, power, and violence that his own damaged psyche craves. Besides, the movies did good box office.

The stupidity of reviving the original Alcatraz is apparently an ongoing Trump obsession. Regardless, the state of Florida decided that it needs its very own Alcatraz.

And now it has one.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is the catchy name slapped onto the recently repurposed Immigration Detention Center in Immokalee, Florida. Spanning up to 900 acres, the site is being converted into a mass migrant detention center, featuring treacherous swampland filled with reptiles serving as backup prison guards.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is not a Trump property. Instead, it was a name picked up by James Uthmeier, the Florida attorney general appointed by Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor whom Trump disemboweled in the 2024 Republican primary.

So, at least in the short run, Trump is content to allow Florida Republicans to bask in a sliver of his limelight. Their mission: to orchestrate a mass MAGA drool-in over the prospect of torturing the migrants they’re programmed to despise — and then cheer the idea of alligators and snakes devouring the fleeing souls.

For every such backdrop, a grift cannot be far behind. If there’s a surprising part of this story, it’s that Trump has not personally served as drum major for the grifter parade. The Florida GOP has taken the lead in selling “Alligator Alcatraz” branded merchandise, including T-shirts, trucker hats and — get this —baby onesies.

Uthmeier announced his own spinoff merch line, with proceeds helping to fund his 2026 campaign. What better way to shout out Americana than with a celebration of barbaric cruelty?

Naturally, Trump couldn’t resist getting a piece of that. He toured the site, joked about escapees being eaten by snakes and alligators, and told reporters the only way out was “a one-way flight.” He beamed with pride. And he knows a branding opportunity for robbing rubes when he sees one. Don’t be surprised if he gets into the action, perhaps with a bitcoin twist.

The footnotes to this story should be its headlines. The large majority of inmates to be housed in this celebrated house of horrors won’t be violent criminals — indeed, the number of actual convicts of violent felonies is minuscule.

But the news media seemed not overly interested in that — at least not on this day when photos of cages and reptile imagery provided the shock and awe necessary for ratings. If there was mention of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — that superfluous language forbidding “cruel and unusual punishments” — it died on the cutting-room floor.

One prominent Trump Cabinet member not visibly joining in the frivolity was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, and son of the man who closed Alcatraz.

That’s too bad. Even though Junior’s portfolio is destroying the nation’s health — torturing public health experts, not immigrants — it would have been fitting for the twisted offspring of RFK to have provided the bookends for the Alcatraz story.

The great RFK closes down Alcatraz. The wayward son applauds its wannabe replacement, one committed to demonizing immigrants. That’s the mother’s milk of authoritarianism around the globe.

For a fleeting moment after the demise of Alcatraz, America seemed to recognize that the punishment had gone too far — that an institution notorious for “The Hole,” the psychological torture, the pain and the suffering, wasn’t something to be glorified. Even if it took movies to open eyes, there was a glimpse of moral clarity.

Today, that view seems squishy to some, off-topic to others. No need to shut down symbols of state cruelty.

Just monetize them.