The City of Albuquerque is fighting to protect more than $92 million in federal funding that supports police officers, affordable housing and homelessness programs by joining two lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to withhold money from cities that limit cooperation with immigration enforcement.
The city filed a motion last week to join a coalition of more than 30 cities and counties in a case in the Northern District of California, and officially joined a King County, Washington lawsuit against the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
At risk is $17 million in Department of Justice funding that accounts for a large portion of the Albuquerque Police Department’s budget, including salaries for dozens of officers, equipment purchases and processing of sexual assault evidence kit backlogs. The city’s 2026 budget also includes $563,500 in Department of Homeland Security funding that could be cut.
“Federal policies are putting essential services and Albuquerque families at risk,” Mayor Tim Keller said. “We need to ensure our police officers are well-equipped and fairly paid, and that vulnerable people aren’t pushed further into homelessness. We’re calling on the Trump administration to stop using law enforcement funding as a political weapon over immigration.”
The Trump administration has signed executive orders directing federal agencies to withhold federal funding from “sanctuary jurisdictions” that limit cooperation with immigration enforcement, as part of a broader $150 billion immigration enforcement agenda that Congress has allocated to support the president’s deportation efforts.
APD Chief Harold Medina, who serves as president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said he raised concerns directly with the Attorney General about the funding cuts.
“The loss of DOJ and DHS grants would hamper APD’s overall ability to provide vital public safety services, such as processing evidence, investigating drug trafficking, connecting victims to services, paying officers who serve the community and ultimately APD’s ability to solve crimes.”
City officials said Albuquerque expects to receive an additional $75.4 million in federal multi-year grants budgeted in prior years, largely for public infrastructure projects, including affordable housing, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, social service contracts, park development, HUD grants, FEMA grants and investments in programs to address homelessness.
“There’s an immediate need for more affordable housing across our City to uplift the most vulnerable, and funding we receive through HUD is an irreplaceable resource needed to keep building,” said Gilbert Ramirez, Director of the Department of Health, Housing and Homelessness. “These grants also keep people in their homes through key programming like our eviction prevention program, rental assistance, and more.”
The federal government is imposing new conditions on funding, mainly focused on forcing cities to participate in federal immigration efforts. The Trump administration wants cities to keep databases of residents and share information with federal agencies, requirements that city officials say are “unlawful, unconstitutional, and unconscionable.”
In a March filing, attorneys for the Trump administration defended the planned funding cutoffs as part of the president’s January 20 executive order to ensure that “sanctuary jurisdictions” that “interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations” do not receive federal funds.
The Department of Justice previously awarded Albuquerque $9.7 million in 2020 to support local efforts to combat violent crime through the COPS Hiring Program. The city also has $2.7 million and $9.4 million in gap financing available for affordable housing development in 2024, funded through HUD programs.
The Keller administration was slow to spend the COPS funding, which city councilors successfully lobbied for in Washington in 2000. (We were criticized by the ‘defund the police’ crowd for that.) It would be interesting to know why those funds are still lying around in 2015.
Federal housing funds also should have been proactively programmed, committed and expended locally as the highest priority. The abominably slow pace of this administrations’ programming for increased housing production, particularly during Keller’s first term, is well-documented. Only after CAO Sarita Nair was removed due to Council’s non-support of her reappointment in his second term, did the mayor focus on housing. (Ms. Nair is now the Governor´s housing leader.) Unfortunately the city’s commitment and participation in the housing collaborative with Bernalillo County remains tepid.