PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release

August 5, 2025

Contact: press@alianzaamericas.org / (773) 638-4278

On July 24, 2025, Trump signed an executive order instructing a number of Cabinet Secretaries to implement a criminalization and medicalization approach towards homelessness. The order promotes forced institutionalization of unhoused people under the guise of mental health or drug addiction treatment, without their consent or access to adequate care. It also instructs the Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Health and Human Services to review federal grant programs and give funding preference to cities that increase policing and criminal enforcement against open drug use and homeless encampments. 

These directives ignore people's inherent dignity and continue the dangerous trend of using deprivation of liberty as a response to poverty and systemic neglect. Rather than address the root causes of homelessness, such as unaffordable housing, stagnant wages, and a lack of community-based care, this administration is choosing to punish people for being poor, and worse, institutionalize them against their will so that they are not visible.

Let us be clear: homelessness is a policy outcome. Over 650,000 people in the U.S. were unhoused in 2023, the highest number ever recorded since national data collection began. Research consistently shows that permanent supportive housing, harm reduction services, and access to voluntary treatment are the most effective ways to end chronic homelessness, not arrests, forced removals, or institutionalization. The U.S. is indeed facing a serious housing and drug crisis, but we cannot arrest, evict, or incarcerate our way out of it. This is an issue of deep wealth and social inequities in the U.S.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, inequality is so pronounced in the U.S. that the richest 1% of households averaged 139 times as much income as the bottom 20% in 2021. The existence of widespread homelessness is not the result of individual failures, but of an economic system and policy choices that have allowed extreme wealth to accumulate in the hands of a few while leaving millions without basic necessities. We must address these economic disparities by dismantling systems that promote this disproportionate distribution of wealth, and instead ensure people have access to a livable wage, affordable housing, and programs that allow them to seek care, especially mental health care.

Trump campaigned on promises to uplift poor and working-class people. This executive order betrays that promise. It prioritizes authoritarian control and punitive surveillance over people’s rights, health, and freedom, continuing a pattern of governance that seeks to strip people of care, housing, and independence, while falsely blaming immigrants and marginalized communities for systemic failures.

Immigrants are not the cause of our nation’s housing crisis. The real roots lie in decades of disinvestment and policies that prioritize profit over people. Just as Trump has fueled a false narrative to criminalize and detain immigrants, this executive order similarly seeks to portray unhoused individuals as dangerous and in need of incarceration or institutionalization. These dehumanizing and stigmatizing strategies are not only misleading, they are fundamentally disconnected from the truth. 

Alianza Americas calls on all leaders to reject fear-based politics and instead advance real solutions rooted in equity, dignity, and care. The Trump Administration can not continue governing through extorting state and local authorities when its views are not followed. We need bold investments in affordable housing, mental health services, and harm reduction, not more jails. Every person, regardless of race, income, or immigration status, deserves a safe place to call home and the freedom to move.

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Alianza Americas is a transnational network of migrant-led organizations in the United States. We advocate for social justice, equity and human rights in the Americas.