Can Albuquerque comply with new Trump homelessness order?

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at requiring cities to take a more muscular approach to homelessness, mental illness and drug use.

The order calls on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to redirect federal funding into programs that enforce prohibitions on homeless encampments and “open illicit drug use.” It also takes aim at harm-reduction and safe-space programs that are intended to prevent diseases, overdoses and reduce violence for people who struggle with substance abuse and homelessness.

Advocates for the homeless said Thursday that the order would be impossible to implement in New Mexico, where treatment facilities and shelter beds are in short supply.

“We don’t have a strong enough behavioral health system to accommodate something like what (Trump) is talking about,” said Monet Silva, executive director of the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness. State lawmakers have made efforts to address the shortage in recent sessions “but it’s not built,” she said.

Albuquerque has an estimated 2,740 people experiencing homelessness, compared with a total of 1,284 shelter beds available, according to the organization’s 2024 point-in-time count.

On Thursday, several unhoused people congregating outside homeless service provider HopeWorks didn’t see how the order would work.

Carlos said it would be difficult to provide drug treatment to Albuquerque’s unhoused with the state’s lacking resources. Alex, who said she has been waiting for housing since becoming homeless in 2022, couldn’t picture the unhoused being forcibly removed from public spaces.

The National Homelessness Law Center, in a statement, called the order a return to “backwards, expensive and ineffective policies” that expand the use of law enforcement and institutionalization to respond to homelessness. “This Executive Order is rooted in outdated, racist myths about homelessness and will undoubtedly make homelessness worse,” according to the statement.

Albuquerque officials said they have not had time to study Trump’s order.

“City staff will thoroughly review the executive order to determine its specific impacts and how the City intends to protect our unhoused population,” a spokesperson for Mayor Tim Keller’s office said in a statement.

The Republican Party of New Mexico did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment.

Trump’s order also calls for a more vigorous use of the civil commitment process to direct people with mental health and substance abuse problems into treatment facilities.

The order calls for increased use of civil commitment to ensure that people with mental illness “who pose risks to themselves or the public” are committed to “appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.”

Civil commitment, sometimes called involuntary commitment, allows a judge to commit someone into treatment for mental illness against their wishes.

“Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order,” the order states.

The order, published on the White House’s website, said the number of homeless living on the streets in a single night in the U.S. peaked at 274,000 under the Biden Administration and contends that the majority “are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both.” Overall, experts believe there are more than 771,000 homeless in America, up from an average of 550,000 pre-pandemic.

The order directs Bondi to end legal barriers that would encourage civil commitment of people with mental illness “who pose a risk to themselves or the public.”

New Mexico lawmakers have grappled with the issue of court-supervised treatment for people with mental illness.

Lawmakers scrapped a bill last year intended to expand court-supervised outpatient treatment for people with mental illness. Some lawmakers said that a shortage of behavioral health treatment options in New Mexico is an underlying problem that makes any changes in civil commitment laws difficult to enforce.