US Attorney General Pam Bondi has remarked the infamous Alcatraz could "hold anything" during a visit to the prison in the San Francisco Bay, weeks after President Donald Trump said he would order the long-shuttered facility, now operated as a historical site, to once again house violent criminals.

Joined by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and a Fox News crew, Bondi walked through the long-shuttered San Francisco Bay penitentiary, calling it “a terrific facility” that “needs a lot of work” but praised its security, saying “no one has been known to escape and survive”.

“It can hold middle class violent prisoners," Bondi told Fox News.

"It could hold illegal aliens. It could hold anything. This is a terrific facility. Needs a lot of work. But no one has been known to escape from Alcatraz and survive.”

Burgum noted that returning Alcatraz to its original purpose would be "relatively straightforward," given its federal history.

“This was part of the Bureau of Federal Prisons," he said.

"And returning it to that purpose is relatively straightforward compared to a lot of other transactions with federal land. But this is one of the reasons why it's ideal is because this was its original purpose.”

Trump in May said he was directing the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which Bondi oversees, to rebuild and reopen the facility as a prison.

It is unclear if there are concrete plans to do so. The Trump administration did not request funds to reopen it from Congress in its latest budget proposal.

Alcatraz prison in the spotlight again, after Trump calls for reopening. - Reuters

Alcatraz was closed as a maximum-security prison in 1963 after 29 years of operation, because it was too expensive to continue operating, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.

The federal prison at Alcatraz had housed notorious US criminals such as Al Capone before it closed. Now managed by the National Park Service, it is one of San Francisco's most popular tourist destinations.

The Trump administration has dubbed a recently opened remote migrant detention centre in the Florida Everglades "Alligator Alcatraz."

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the visit.