BOP To Close Terminal Island – Update for December 1, 2025

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TERMINAL ISLAND CLOSING AS BOP RAMPS UP INFRASTRUCTURE REPAIR

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is closing FCI Terminal Island – located near Long Beach, California, near Los Angeles – over concerns about crumbling infrastructure, according to an internal memo obtained last week by the Associated Press.

Director William K. Marshall III told BOP staff on Tuesday that the agency is suspending operations at Terminal Island, a low-security prison south of Los Angeles that currently houses 952 inmates. The decision to close the facility “is not easy, but is absolutely necessary,” Marshall wrote, calling it a matter of “safety, common sense, and doing what is right for the people who work and live inside that institution.”

Marshall said if the prison remains open, falling concrete in tunnels that deliver infrastructure could hurt workers or create a prison-wide emergency. “There is a very real risk that falling concrete could strike the steam lines,” he wrote. “If that happens, heat to the institution could be lost instantly, creating an emergency that could require the evacuation of nearly 1,000 inmates in a matter of hours. We are not going to wait for a crisis. We are not going to gamble with lives. And we are not going to expect people to work or live in conditions that we would never accept for ourselves.”

The 87-year-old Terminal Island facility is the latest prison to be targeted for closure as the BOP struggles with mounting staff vacancies, a $4 billion repair backlog, and an expanded mission to support President Trump’s immigration crackdown and to invest billions in a rebuilt Alcatraz prison.

In a statement to Government Executive, a BOP spokeswoman said efforts to protect staff and inmates at the facility will begin immediately. “A strategic and targeted approach will be used to relocate inmates currently housed at FCI Terminal Island to other locations across the agency,” she said. “Several placement options are being evaluated, with a priority on keeping individuals as close as possible to their anticipated release locations.”

BOP said decisions regarding what to do about the facility, including whether and how to repair it, will wait until a “further assessment” of the situation there. News of the planned evacuation came just days after the agency touted $2 billion in funding to address deferred maintenance priorities across the federal prison system from this year’s budget reconciliation law.

According to the Los Angeles Times, an assessment last year revealed that Terminal Island needs $110 million in repairs over the next 20 years, raising questions about whether the BOP will ever be in a position to move inmates back to the facility.

In late 2024, the BOP announced that seven other facilities would be shuttered. The decision to close one, FPC Duluth, was reversed, but the others have been decommissioned.

The report that Terminal Island will close came only a few days after BOP Deputy Director Joshua Smith released a video message to BOP staff reporting that $2 billion had become available for repair of BOP infrastructure. He said the BOP hasn’t

wasted a minute. We began with the simplest most commonsense step imaginable. We looked at how money was actually being spent, and what we found was jaw-dropping. Entire complexes that included two USP’s getting only $1.8 million, while a standalone USP somehow got $2 [million]. No rhyme, no reason, just the same old good old boy system deciding whose friends got taken care of.

Smith said that facilities, functions planning, construction, maintenance, and environmental energy – roughly 2000 positions within the institutions – will report to his office. “This isn’t bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake,” Smith said. “That’s how we get things done, centralized oversight, national prioritization, real accountability, and the kind of data-driven decision making that finally lets us attack the backlog instead of just talking about it.”

The infrastructure program will depend on training inmates in skilled trades and having them work on infrastructure repair in positions that pay on a scale with UNICOR.

Associated Press, Federal Bureau of Prisons says falling concrete is forcing it to close a prison near Los Angeles (November 25, 2025)

Government Executive, Bureau of Prisons to ‘suspend operations’ at California penitentiary (November 25, 2025)

KABC-TV, San Pedro prison to suspend operations amid concerns over falling concrete (November 25, 2025)

Los Angeles Times, Crumbling ceilings in underground tunnels force closure of Terminal Island prison (November 26, 2025)

BOP, A New Era For Facilities (November 22, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root