Albuquerque Mayor's Stance on Homelessness Contradicted by Soaring Arrests

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, who publicly stated that arrests are not the solution to homelessness during his recent reelection campaign, has overseen a significant increase in the criminalization of homeless individuals. A recent analysis reveals that under Keller's leadership, charges for offenses commonly associated with homelessness have dramatically risen. In 2025, charges for obstructing sidewalks surged to 1,256, nearly six times the total from the previous eight years combined, while trespassing charges exceeded 3,000, the highest since 2017. Unlawful camping cases also jumped from 113 to 704 in the same period, according to previously unreleased county data from the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts.

Despite many of these citations eventually being dismissed, each carries a court date, and failure to appear often results in a bench warrant and subsequent arrest. This trend has directly contributed to a sharp increase in jail bookings for individuals identified as homeless or "transient" in Bernalillo County. Bookings in this category skyrocketed from 3,670 in 2022 to nearly 12,000 in 2025.

By late 2025, transient individuals comprised approximately 49% of the county jail's population, coinciding with the facility experiencing its highest average daily population in a decade. On some days last year, the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center housed more homeless individuals than the city's largest local shelter, indicating a clear shift towards incarceration despite the mayor's stated policy.