Albuquerque Homeless Citations Have Surged Despite Mayor’s Rhetoric — ProPublica

During his reelection campaign last fall, the mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, criticized his challenger for suggesting the city should get tougher on the homeless population. Such an approach would be cruel, Tim Keller said during a televised debate with former County Sheriff Darren White.

The city clears encampments and gives people citations “all the time,” said Keller, who defeated White to win a third term. But “this problem is complex and you cannot dumb it down to arresting people,” he said. “You simply cannot arrest your way out of this problem whether you want to or not.”

Despite his rhetoric, a ProPublica analysis found that under Keller’s leadership, Albuquerque has increasingly criminalized conduct associated with homelessness, causing a growing number of people on the streets to be arrested and jailed.

In 2025, people were charged 1,256 times for obstructing sidewalks, nearly six times the number of cases in the previous eight years combined. More than 3,000 trespassing charges were handed out last year, the highest for any year since 2017. And cases of unlawful camping increased to 704 from 113 the year before, according to previously unreported county data provided to ProPublica by the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts.

In recent years, a majority of these cases, once they were adjudicated, were dismissed. But not without consequences: Each citation lists a court date, which, if missed, can lead to a bench warrant and arrest.

And that’s often what has happened.

Over the past four years, the number of bookings in Bernalillo County’s jail classified as homeless or “transient” has skyrocketed — to nearly 12,000 in 2025, from 3,670 in 2022. In recent months, the share of people booked who are transient made up about 49% of the jail’s population, according to a ProPublica analysis.

This has occurred as the average daily population at the jail from July 2024 through June 2025 reached its highest point in a decade. On some days last year, the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center held more homeless people than the largest local shelter.

The city’s homeless population has more than doubled from 2022 to 2025, while the increase in homeless people jailed by the county has more than tripled during the same time period. Police and court records and interviews with homeless people show the increase in their incarceration is primarily driven by the cascading effects of repeatedly citing people who are experiencing homelessness.

In an interview with ProPublica, Keller echoed his contention from the debate that citations and arrests are not a solution to homelessness. Still, he defended the actions police have taken. “What we’re doing is following the letter of the law. There are much more punitive things that I’m sure a lot of people would want, that we don’t do because they’re inappropriate,” he said. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for Keller noted that other cities “rely on immediate arrests, blanket sweeps without service connection or criminal penalties without offering alternatives.” The city issues three citations before an arrest is made, the spokesperson said. (People living outside told ProPublica they’ve been taken to jail without first receiving three citations.) 

When ProPublica pointed out that citations can lead to arrests and jail time, Keller acknowledged that jail “is not the solution.” But, he said, people call the city and ask that laws be enforced.

In recent years, U.S. cities, facing record numbers of people on the street, have adopted more laws targeting them. In 2024, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities may enforce bans against sleeping outside, more than 150 municipalities nationwide, including Albuquerque, either passed new laws prohibiting public camping or ramped up enforcement of existing laws.

President Donald Trump has endorsed this approach, calling for federal grants to be prioritized for cities that enforce bans on “urban camping and loitering.”

The emphasis on enforcement has come despite evidence that such citations and arrests are costly. For example, Bernalillo County spends about $169 per night to jail inmates without significant medical or mental health needs, according to a county spokesperson. The cost increases for people with severe medical ($250 a day) and mental health (about $450 a day) needs, a spokesperson said. 

By comparison, housing an individual in the city’s year-round emergency shelter costs $44 a night.

Tony Robinson, a political science professor at the University of Colorado who has studied camping bans, said the share of homeless inmates in Bernalillo County’s jail is “unusually high” — even at a time when cities are ramping up enforcement. ProPublica found that jails in similarly sized counties, including San Francisco and Pasco County, Florida, have lower rates of incarceration for people who are marked homeless.

Citing people who are homeless can land them in jail because some lack cellphones or an address where they can receive notices by mail. This is a barrier to appearing in court, leading to a warrant for their arrest, he said. “Simple citations lead to jail time and arrest by a predictable path.” 

ProPublica reviewed more than 100 cases and interviewed two dozen people experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque about their encounters with police. Nearly everyone ProPublica spoke to had been charged for a crime associated with homelessness. They said they feel singled out by the police: Officers contact them frequently and issue citations, which can lead to warrants. When officers see they have warrants, they can take them to jail.

Natalie Rankin, a 45-year-old homeless woman in Albuquerque, was charged 12 times over the last year for a variety of crimes, including blocking the sidewalk, public camping and criminal trespassing. She spent a night in jail in August after an officer noticed that she had a warrant for her arrest.

“I don’t do anything more than get little warrants for not showing up in court,” she said in August. 

Rankin has already been charged at least seven times in 2026 and spent at least one day in jail.

Since Keller took office nine years ago, Albuquerque has spent at least $100 million to expand the city’s Gateway system, which includes shelter for families and adults, a 50-person treatment program, and a place where people are supervised by medical professionals as they withdraw from drugs or alcohol.

“We’re one of the few cities who really has been proactive about building a new system,” Keller said. “It needs tons of work and tons of help, but we’ve at least built something that has gotten 1,000 people off the street.”

Meanwhile, the city’s homeless population, which was at least 2,960 last year, exceeds the shelters’ capacity even with the expansions. Keller has also become less tolerant of encampments in public spaces like parks and sidewalks, vowing to not allow “tent cities.”

In text messages reported in 2024 by the news organization City Desk ABQ, Keller asked then-police Chief Harold Medina to develop a plan to address the “growing crisis.” Medina texted back a plan to “hammer the unhoused.” (After the texts were published, a spokesperson for Keller said, “We continue to balance enforcing laws against illegal activity to keep our communities safe, and providing resources for people experiencing homelessness to both get them connected to services.”) 

The city has been accused of breaking the law as it carries out the crackdown.

In 2022, current and former homeless people sued Albuquerque in state district court over its targeting of encampments, alleging the city “criminalizes their status as homeless,” according to court documents. The class-action lawsuit is pending.

A 2024 ProPublica investigation found city workers routinely discarded the belongings of homeless people as they cleared encampments, violating a court order and city policy. Some people told ProPublica in recent interviews that city workers continue to throw away their belongings, and police are issuing citations more frequently.

Officers have not targeted people who are homeless, Medina said in an interview in December. The increase in citations and arrests for crimes associated with homelessness are the result of a broader crime-fighting surge, he said.

Last April, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham deployed the National Guard to assist Albuquerque police, citing the “fentanyl epidemic and rising violent juvenile crime.” The National Guard was also to provide humanitarian and medical assistance in parts of the city frequented by people who are homeless.

“It’s important that we don’t categorize this as, ‘We’re doing an initiative on the unhoused,’” said Medina, who retired at the end of last year. “We’re doing an initiative across the board.” 

City statistics show, however, that the biggest jump in arrests from 2024 to 2025 was for misdemeanor warrants, the kinds described by many of the people ProPublica interviewed. Arrests associated with misdemeanor warrants were up 72%.

Priscilla Montano, 67, sometimes stays under a bridge near downtown Albuquerque. She said city workers, who are occasionally accompanied by police, visit the spot at least five days a week to tell people to move their belongings. In July, Montano was charged three times for unlawful camping and obstructing sidewalks. In September, she was incarcerated for a day on the same charges. There is a warrant for her arrest related to a separate violation from September.

Montano said each time she goes to jail her belongings are thrown away. She’s lost her wedding ring and property she needs to survive.

Lisandra Tonkin, who leads a team at the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness that helps people find housing, said the crackdown has made it more difficult to stay in touch with the people they’re trying to help because they’re “constantly moved” by sweeps and jail stays.

City officials say they first offer resources, including a spot in a shelter. Tonkin said some people are reluctant to accept because they have been traumatized by their experiences in shelters, like being assaulted or having their belongings stolen. The offer sometimes comes with requirements they won’t accept, like giving up a pet or separating from a companion. 

“So what is the solution of where to move them? I think a lot of times the choice is shelter or jail,” she said.

The result, according to Medina, the former chief, is that the Metropolitan Detention Center has become the state’s largest “mental health facility.”

“I don’t think it’s ideal for these individuals to always end up in jail, 100%, but there’s limited resources and ability to get people to those resources under our current system,” he said.

People who have received citations or who have been arrested told ProPublica that the city’s offer is either a bed in a shelter that used to be the county jail or nothing at all.

One evening in December, Tiffany Leger sat on a sidewalk in northwest Albuquerque listening to a virtual meeting through headphones. Leger, who spent two years on the streets but now has a home, still visits friends who live outside and shares phone numbers for local organizations where they can seek help. As she listened to the virtual meeting, police approached and told her she was being detained for camping, noting there was a tent nearby. The officers issued a citation.

Over the years, Leger has heard from friends that if police offer resources, it’s usually a card with outdated information on shelters in the city or a bed in the shelter on the outskirts of town, she said.

Leger said that usually police approach people who look homeless and check for warrants, sometimes leading to an arrest. 

For decades, Peter Cubra has monitored the city’s treatment of homeless people. Cubra was involved in a 1995 lawsuit in which Jimmy McClendon, an inmate at the Bernalillo County Detention Center, sued Albuquerque and the county over conditions there, including overcrowding. The lawsuit also alleged that police were jailing people, including those who were homeless, for nonviolent misdemeanors. 

A city settlement in the lawsuit directed police to issue citations for nonviolent misdemeanors, when possible, instead of making arrests on the spot. 

Cubra said that in 2020, he started noticing “slow-motion arrests,” where police issue citations understanding that a person experiencing homelessness won’t get the notices from court. Police, he said, would revisit the same location, demand identification and run warrant checks, eventually picking people up on warrants from the previous citations or charges.

Janus Herrera, a local advocate and volunteer, said people have told her they miss court dates because they lost paperwork stating where and when to appear in court that they received during an encampment sweep.

“People are already strained to a breaking point,” she said. “You keep adding more and more on top of that.”

ProPublica’s review of 100 randomly selected cases for criminal trespassing from 2025 showed 67% of people had missed their court dates, leading to an arrest warrant. 

Most of the people ProPublica interviewed who had gone to jail said they were held overnight and released back to the streets with a pending case. A recent study supports their claims: From 2024 to 2025, the number of people jailed for less than a day increased by 131%, according to a data analysis by the Center for Applied Research and Analysis at the University of New Mexico.

If a person doesn’t attend subsequent court dates, their case can result in additional warrants. The next time they encounter police, they can be arrested again.

Cubra said instead of repeatedly citing and arresting people, some communities designate places for people to “informally but deliberately” sleep outdoors without harassment. (A church opened such a space in Albuquerque last year with capacity for 10 tents.) But in Albuquerque, Cubra said, the arrests “have persisted and accelerated” over the past year, which he called “shameful.”

“Our city is knowingly saying, ‘We won’t let you sleep outdoors,” Cubra said. “We know there is no place for you to sleep indoors, and we’re going to keep arresting you and harassing you for something that is unavoidable and intrinsic to just existing.’”

Methodology

ProPublica obtained court data on three charges frequently associated with homelessness: criminal trespassing, unlawful obstruction of sidewalks and unlawful camping. In some circumstances, a single charge appeared multiple times in the data. In these cases, we included only the most recent outcome associated with the charges. We also excluded cases marked as transferred within the court system, to avoid double-counting. As much as possible, we excluded cases where it was clear the charges were not directly associated with homelessness — for example, domestic violence and driving under the influence.

The court data did not include housing status. The county jail tracks whether a person has permanent housing during booking and marks a person “transient.” The court data did not list the law enforcement agency that issued the charge. But jail data shows the Albuquerque Police Department was responsible for 75% of the homeless bookings from 2020 to 2025. 

ProPublica interviewed 24 people who are homeless about being charged with crimes associated with their housing status. We independently verified their cases through court records.