July 18 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to convert Alcatraz back into a maximum-security prison could cost roughly $2 billion, Axios reported on Friday citing administration sources. Alcatraz was closed as a maximum-security prison in 1963 ...

Alcatraz is one of San Francisco's biggest sightseeing attractions, but on Thursday two members of the Trump administration toured the former federal prison, indicating they were on a mission to follow through on President Trump's proposal to reopen the site as a prison.

An aerial view of the former prison on Alcatraz Island, with San Francisco in the background. Photo: Kirby Lee/

But data and news reports about the first month’s arrivals show the majority of Alligator Alcatraz’s detainees do not have U.S. criminal convictions.  President Donald Trump, federal officials and Florida Republicans touted the remote Everglades immigration detention centers — dubbed Alligator Alcatraz — as a place to detain people deemed the "worst of the worst.

A class-action lawsuit alleges that people being held at the immigrant detention center in the Everglades "effectively have no way to contest their detention."

“In most respects, ICE facilities operate with less consistent oversight and legal accountability than state or federal prisons or local jails,” Brinkley-Rubinstein said. “ICE detention facilities and people that run them tend to be much less transparent about their operations.”