Trump's Public Safety Executive Order Sparks Reactions from Advocates and Supporters

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Editor's Note

The long-rumored executive order (EO) on public safety — Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets — was released by the White House on Thursday, July 24. Below are links to the EO’s full text, an accompanying fact sheet, and a breakdown from the National Association of Counties (NACo). We’ve also included coverage from several news outlets, followed by a range of reactions — from advocates opposed to the EO, to full-throated support from Cicero Action and an Idaho state legislator, and a more nuanced response from the Governor of Hawaii and the Mayor of Honolulu, who expressed interest in the EO’s funding opportunities.

Executive Order

President Trump last Thursday signed an executive order making it easier for cities and states to remove homeless people from the streets and get them treatment elsewhere. The president's order asks Attorney General Pam Bondi to "reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees that limit state and local governments' ability to commit individuals on the streets who are a risk to themselves or others," according to a White House fact sheet. It also commits federal funding to move people on the streets who are "causing public disorder and that are suffering from serious mental illness or addiction" to "treatment centers, assisted outpatient treatment, or other facilities." In addition to this executive order, The White House also released a fact sheet.

The order directs the Departments of Justice (DOJ), Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Transportation (DOT) to:

• Support civil commitment and institutional treatment for individuals with serious mental illness or substance use disorder who are unsheltered and unable to care for themselve
• Prioritize grants to jurisdictions that enforce laws against open drug use, unauthorized camping and squatting
• Restrict funding for harm-reduction programs like safe consumption sites
• Increase grantee accountability in homelessness programs, including requirements for treatment participation and public safety outcomes
• Allow or require programs to collect health data and, where allowed by law, share it with law enforcement

Reporting

President Donald Trump took executive action on July 24 making it easier for cities and states to remove homeless people from the streets. The moveredirects federal funds to ensure the homeless people impacted are transferred to rehabilitation, treatment and other facilities, though it was not clear how much money would be allocated. Trump's action comes after the Supreme Court (Grants Pass v. Johnson) ruled in June that that people without homes can be arrested and fined for sleeping in public spaces, overturning a lower court’s ruling that enforcing camping bans when shelter is lacking is cruel and unusual punishment.

The executive order equires interagency work on grants for states to enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping, loitering and squatting, and to track sex offenders. And, it requires redirecting funds to ensure people sleeping on streets and causing public disorder, and suffering from serious mental illness or addiction, are moved to facilities like treatment centers. Additionally, the order requires that discretionary grants for substance use prevention, treatment and recovery do not go toward funding “drug injection sites or illicit drug use,” and it aims to stop sex offenders who receive homelessness assistance from being housed with children and allows programs to house women and children exclusively.

Advocates' Response

While addressing the nationwide homelessness crisis is urgent and necessary, yesterday's executive order promoting institutionalization of people with mental illness raises grave concerns for NAMI and our community. NAMI believes that in the rare instances where voluntary engagement in treatment is not possible, involuntary commitment should be used only as a last resort and only when it is believed to be in the best interests of the individual. While it is unclear how the executive order will be carried out since state law governs the process of involuntary civil commitment, the order also urges moving away from a “housing first” approach, which has been successful in helping individuals stay connected to treatment and reduce homelessness. This executive order comes at a time when significant cuts are being made to mental health services nationwide. Earlier this month, Congress passed legislation that will drastically cut Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, impacting millions of Americans.

Amidst a national worsening housing and homelessness crisis, Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order that will make homelessness in DC worse, not better. Trump’s Executive Order directs the Secretary of the Interior to utilize the National Park Service to displace homeless people surviving on federal lands in DC with no plan to house them. Unlike other jurisdictions, the Federal Government controls a high percentage of land in DC, including many small neighborhood parks. DC currently has nearly 1,000 people who sleep outside, DC’s 800 low-barrier shelter beds are already full. There are limited cots in hypothermia shelters, but those are closing soon. Research shows that encampment evictions without a plan to house people decrease public safety, waste money, and increase health risks.

Scout Katovich, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality, issued the following statement: “Pushing people into locked institutions and forcing treatment won’t solve homelessness or support people with disabilities. The exact opposite is true – institutions are dangerous and deadly, and forced treatment doesn’t work. President Trump is blaming individuals for systemic failures and doubling down on policies that punish people with nowhere else to go – all after signing a law that decimates Medicaid, the number one payer for addiction and mental health services. "

Suporting

Cicero Action proudly supports President Trump’s Executive Order cracking down on encampments, defunding failed housing-first programs, promoting treatment for the homeless, and restoring authority to local leaders ready to act. For years, federal policy has enabled lawlessness—protecting unlawful encampments, subsidizing addiction, and ignoring serious mental illness. This executive order is a direct challenge to the activist-led industrial complex that profits from permanent homelessness and blocks reform. It backs law enforcement, prioritizes treatment over tents, and sends a clear message: cities don’t have to tolerate chaos.

According to the lawmaker behind Utah’s recent homelessness reforms, executive order represents a “sea change.” “This executive order is like turning around the Titanic,” Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, told the Deseret News, “We’re going to prioritize providers and states and cities who take these innovative approaches, and recognize this is a human issue, not only a housing issue.” Over the past few legislative sessions, Clancy has spearheaded the governor’s homelessness initiative by extending involuntary commitment times, prohibiting syringe exchange programs in certain areas and enhancing criminal penalties for drug possession in and around homeless shelters.

Trump says his administration will prioritize funding to cities that crack down on open drug use and street camping. Both Gov. Josh Green and Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi say the federal funding will help support critical services. In a statement, Green said, “The state of Hawaii strongly welcomes additional funding to expand access to addiction treatment services and to further support kauhale, my signature initiative offering deeply affordable, recovery‑oriented housing communities. With robust wrap‑around care, kauhale empower individuals to move into stable, healing environments following residential or detox programs. Investing more in treatment pathways and kauhale village development allows Hawaiʻi to strengthen pathways to recovery, reduce recidivism and build stronger communities grounded in ‘ohana and shared responsibility."

Follow Ups

Editor's Comment: This week’s Follow Ups begins in Iowa, where the Department of Corrections has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to privatize healthcare across the state’s prison system (see Editor's Comment from July 15). An op-ed in the Des Moines Register strongly opposes this move, warning that current state-employed healthcare staff could lose pension benefits and access to student loan forgiveness. The op-ed also notes that several former Iowa prison health administrators now work for VitalCore, and that portions of the RFP appear to mirror language used in VitalCore’s other contracts (for more on VitalCore see Editor's Note of January 30, 2024, Proprietary Correctional Healthcare Vendor Merry-Go-Round).

In Oklahoma County, a long-stalled mental health facility project is finally moving forward. As previously reported (January 7, 2025), the state attorney general had to intervene to push the project ahead. The second article below confirms that construction is underway, with completion expected by December 26. The poor condition of the existing jail has long been cited as a key driver of the county’s correctional crises—something COCHS has documented extensively.

Also in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Voice reports that the state has taken control of the Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility from GEO Group. As mentioned in the May 13, 2025 Editor’s Note ( Clawbacks Rare, Lawsuits Common ), a lawsuit had been filed over the denial of medical care that resulted in an inmate’s death. Despite these serious concerns, closure of the facility has not been seriously considered—likely due to the fact that it employs more than 400 people.

We end in New York State, where the fallout from the correctional officers’ wildcat strike continues. The Marshall Project reports that 32% of correctional officer positions remain vacant. This shortage has direct implications for healthcare: without staff to escort patients, access to medical care is limited, and some facilities report prisoners spending up to 17 hours a day in their cells—verging on continuous lockdown. As noted in last week’s Follow Ups, New York appears locked in a crisis with no easy resolution.

Privatizing Correctional Healthcare In Iowa

In an op-ed a Thomas Hansen from Burlington, Iowa writes: The state of Iowa is quietly moving toward a decision that would harm hundreds of dedicated public servants, endanger thousands of incarcerated Iowans, and cost the taxpayer dearly. The Department of Corrections has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) seeking bids from private companies to take over health care services across all nine state prisons — eliminating roughly 300 state positions currently held by nurses, doctors, and mental health professionals. If this happens, these dedicated professionals will lose their IPERS pensions and other benefits like public service student loan forgiveness. Even more concerning, however, is who's positioned to profit. Two former Iowa prison-health administrators now occupy executive suites at VitalCore Health Strategies — one of the likely bidders. And the state's RFP even appears to lift language from contracts in states where VitalCore is expanding.

Oklahoma

After a zoning battle between the City of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County Commissioners, construction has begun on the facility. The center is located off East Grand and Southeast 15th, financed with pandemic funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan said, “We had the standoff with Oklahoma City, with the litigation on as to whether or not we had the authority to build on this site, and that’s really been the major time cost.”

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections on Friday became the owner of the Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility, ending the state’s use of private prison contracts. “This is the third for-profit prison I’ve closed since becoming governor, and we’ve worked to give tens of thousands of people the opportunity for a second chance,” Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement. “The private prison in Lawton had a terrible reputation for years, and now we get to bring that second chance mindset to those in custody in Lawton.” The state purchased the facility, now known as Red Rock Correctional Center, for $312 million from The GEO Group. The purchase price includes 560 acres.

New York State

When the illegal correctional officers' strike ended in the New York prison system, more than 2,000 of the 13,000-plus striking guards were fired after they refused to return to work. That compounded an ongoing staffing shortage that partially sparked the strike itself. Thirty-five of the state’s 42 prisons are operating with an average of 32% of guard posts unfilled. For incarcerated people, the lingering dysfunctions from the strike run the gamut from frustrating to life-threatening. Without enough officers to drive people to and from specialized doctors’ appointments some incarcerated people are going without vital medical care.

Medicaid & Reentry

Medicaid’s role in correctional health care is becoming embedded in federal policy through sustained, bipartisan action even as the overall Medicaid program is facing cuts. Over the past several years, Congress and federal agencies have worked across administrations to support a new vision of continuity of care for people leaving incarceration. Recent changes to this crucial transition are significant because historically a variety of policies, especially the Medicaid Inmate Exclusion Policy, have severely restricted the ability of carceral and community providers to work hand in hand to promote the health of reentrants (COCHS Dan Mistak is one of the co-authors of this article).

More than two years ago, faced with a growing addiction crisis in the state, Oregon health officials began work on an innovative program that would help people about to be released from jail or prison receive targeted health services through Medicaid. The reentry benefits program appeared to be on track to launch in late 2025 for juveniles and early 2026 for adults, with state funds earmarked for it in Gov. Tina Kotek’s two-year budget proposal released in December. But this summer, the program was quietly delayed. The program was put on pause in anticipation of sweeping changes to Medicaid funding under President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending cuts package, referred to as his “Big Beautiful Bill.”

The majority of inmates at the Clallam County Jail suffer from addiction. While they get sober behind bars, staying clean on the outside proves difficult, often because their health insurance has been cut off. Medicaid is revoked when someone is incarcerated, creating a significant barrier when inmates are inevitably released. Now, Clallam County has become the first in Washington to partner with the state to enroll inmates in or restart Medicaid benefits for inmates 90 days before their release. The program began at the start of July. It is funded for five years, but with federal Medicaid cuts from the Trump administration looming, its future is already uncertain. Officials hope it will prove so successful that politicians won't be able to take it away.

Sutter County will increase its budget for jail health care services by 5%, bringing the total budget to about $4.1 million, after the board of supervisors approved a contract extension with medical services provider Wellpath. Aside from the increased cost, the renewed contract revises language, updates roles and responsibilities, and includes California’s CalAIM Justice-Involved (JI) Reentry Initiative requirements, which began providing services with the jail on April 1. Supervisor Jeff Boone asked Health and Human Services Director Sarah Eberhardt-Rios whether the reimbursements would offset the general fund contributions. Eberhardt-Rios responded that, “There’s a claiming process that we submit eligible claims to the state, and then of course they’d have to pay us, which we still want to be sure we test [as it is] a new process.”

Opioid Epidemic

Dr. Nora Volkow, Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse: “I would have never, ever in my whole life have said, ‘we’re going to cure addiction.’ I think we now have knowledge and tools that could potentially, definitely lead us to a cure for addiction.”

ICE

Mayor Eric Adams yielded to mounting political pressure and called on the federal government to immediately inspect conditions inside the shadowy ICE lock up on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. He did so even as City Hall continues to contest the idea it has any authority over conditions in the Manhattan building. The mayor’s letter came a day after City Comptroller Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams called on the Buildings and Fire departments to inspect conditions inside ICE holding cells on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, arguing the city has the power to enforce local health and safety regulations inside the building.

A Tunisian man is enduring “inhumane conditions” inside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles after U.S. immigration authorities arrested him this month, his family says. Rami Othmane was held July 13 while driving to the grocery store. His wife, Dr. Wafaa Alrashid, said agents blocked Othmane’s car and did not identify themselves or present a warrant before detaining him. Alrashid, chief of medical staff at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, was on FaceTime with her husband during the incident. The couple married on March 5, 2024, and filed an I-130 petition last month to qualify their relationship status to obtain Orthmane’s green card. Alrashid said Othmane was in the country legally, adding that he suffers from chronic pain and an untreated tumor.

Solitary Confinement

Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove and Senator Edward J. Markey have reintroduced the End Solitary Confinement Act, aimed at prohibiting solitary confinement in federal detention facilities with certain exceptions. The legislation seeks to set minimum standards for incarceration, including limits on isolation and improved access to out-of-cell activities. The Act emphasizes the mental and physical health impacts of solitary confinement, which can lead to severe psychological distress and disproportionately affects marginalized groups. Lawmakers argue that such practices hinder rehabilitation and violate basic human rights.

Prison officials failed to give a man who’d spent 14 years in solitary confinement a “meaningful review” of his detention conditions as they kept him in administrative segregation for another five years, the Second Circuit said in a split ruling Friday. From 2000 to 2014, Tyrone Walker was in solitary confinement as punishment for an attack on corrections officers. When the term ended in 2014, he was immediately placed in a nearly identical form of imprisonment, having been deemed a threat to safety at the prison — despite his lack of involvement in any violent incident since the 2000 attack.

Data & Statistics

People with disabilities are detained pretrial and incarcerated at higher rates than other groups, according to a new package of reports. And the percentage of people in jail with mental health disabilities continues to rise despite improvements to local justice systems, like bail reform, faster criminal case processing, and diversion courts. New reports highlight how the criminal justice system often fails to meet the needs of people with disabilities, and it offers opportunities to make the justice system more fair and more accessible.

BJS has released Probation and Parole in the United States, 2023, which presents findings on persons under community supervision on probation or parole. It includes characteristics of the U.S. community supervision population such as sex, race or ethnicity, and most serious offense. The report provides statistics on movements onto and off community supervision, and details types of exits, such as completing one’s term of supervision, being incarcerated, absconding, or other unsatisfactory outcomes while in the community.

Studies

Nearly all states allowing jails and prisons to charge incarcerated people for room and board or medical care highlights a deeper problem: their families, especially Black women, are forced to cover the costs, according to a new report. Black people account for about 37% of the local jail and state prison population and the debt caused by the incarceration fees may be pushing women of color deeper into poverty. In some states, advocates say that debt collectors or probation officers send letters demanding full repayment within 30 days. Women's wages drop more post-conviction than men's — $75/year vs. $26. Black mothers are three times more likely than white mothers to be their family's sole provider.

People incarcerated have limited access to physical activity and there are challenges to accurately measure their physical activity in jail settings. We aimed to (1) determine the feasibility of time use diaries to measure physical activity and sedentary time among people incarcerated in jail and (2) estimate time spent in physical activity and sedentary behaviors, overall and by gender and job assignment.

State Roundup

Alabama

Advocates, experts, formerly incarcerated individuals and family members of those behind bars described an Alabama prison system that kept inmates in a state of terror and a parole system that robbed inmates of hope. Speaking to the Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee meeting in the Alabama Statehouse, witnesses described rampant drug use by those incarcerated in the state’s prisons; trafficking of illicit substances by corrections staff; constant extortion demands by people in prison against one another, and violence perpetrated by both staff and those in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections.

California

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has announced that he is seeking to place Los Angeles County juvenile halls under the control of a court-appointed officer in response to what his office called "persistent failures" in managing the facilities. Bonta is urging Los Angeles County Superior Court to put the youth correctional facilities under a receivership, claiming the County of Los Angeles Probation Department has dragged its feet in complying with a 2021 stipulated court judgment requiring reforms at its youth detention centers

Georgia

Today, U.S. Senators Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) urged the Department of Justice to open an investigation into conditions at the Bibb County Jail in Macon, Georgia. The Senators are demanding action following recent reports of health, safety, and civil rights concerns at the facility. In recent years, multiple inmates have been killed or injured in outbreaks of violence at the jail, including a 22-year-old inmate who was stabbed to death at the facility in June.

A former Georgia sheriff’s deputy has been sentenced to 16 months in federal prison for repeatedly punching a Black detainee whose beating by guards was recorded by a jail security camera nearly three years ago. A U.S. District Court judge sentenced 27-year-old Ryan Biegel on Thursday. The former Camden County deputy had pleaded guilty earlier this year to violating the due process rights of Jarrett Hobbs by using unreasonable force.

Florida

Detoxing from drugs or alcohol can be dangerous anywhere, but when it happens in a turbulent jail environment, the person going through the withdrawal symptoms can be in even greater danger. The case of a Marion County jail inmate, who died five days after being incarcerated while he was overcoming admitted drug use, raises questions about the level of care being provided to inmates at the facility. As part of an ongoing investigation into the uptick in deaths at the Marion County jail, records recently obtained from the jail indicate post-booking ER visits decreased by more than half compared to their historical average from 2022 through 2024 when some inmates died for reasons that could be attributed to delayed medical intervention.

New York

New York will make phone calls free for incarcerated people starting next month.It will join five other states and New York City, all of which have moved in recent years to adopt similar policies. But the change is not being accomplished legislatively; instead, it is a result of negotiations between the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and its telecom provider. Beginning August 1, the department will pay the provider, Securus Technologies, 1.5 cents per minute for the calls, which the agency described as one of the lowest rates in the country, and spend $9 million on the initiative this year. s

Ohio

Cuyahoga County plans to shut down its underperforming Diversion Center next year and replace it with a more comprehensive behavioral health crisis facility that officials say will serve a broader population. But beyond the first three years, it’s unclear how the new center will be funded. County Council, at Executive Chris Ronayne’s request, is contemplating using $7 million in opioid settlement funds to complete a total $30 million renovation to transform the former St. Vincent Charity Medical Center site into a new behavioral health crisis center.

Some of the most high-risk individuals in Lucas County aren’t held in solitary confinement or maximum security — they’re in the jail’s mental health wing, where staff work under constant pressure to care for inmates experiencing extreme psychological distress. The mental health wing was never designed to hold as many people as it does now. Originally a medical unit, it’s now stretched to accommodate 24 high-risk inmates — even as the jail houses upwards of 50 others with serious mental health needs elsewhere in the facility. The root cause is a combination of the opioid crisis and lack of treatment access in the community.

South Dakota

A Sioux Falls jury ordered a former state prison warden to pay $105,000 in damages to an inmate after a federal civil rights trial, but it’s unclear if the warden or state will pay the award. Mark Christians, 45, sued a series of Department of Corrections employees in 2020, alleging that inadequate nutrition caused him to lose 90 pounds between 2017 and 2018 at Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield. He also alleged that prison food had made him ill and left him with permanent health conditions.

Tennessee

A judge’s order to take a Tennessee death row inmate to the hospital on the morning of his execution so doctors can deactivate his heart-regulating implant would cause “chaos,” state attorneys said in an appeal. The argument was one of several in a filing that seeks to overturn an order to deactivate Byron Black's implanted cardioverter-defibrillator, including when and where to do it. Black is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Aug. 5 at 10 a.m.

Rikers Island

An inmate died of a medical emergency in the bathroom of a Rikers Island facility Tuesday morning – marking the eighth reported death of an inmate at the city’s jails this year, officials said. A correction officer found the man – whose name has not been released pending family notification – lying on the floor of a restroom inside the Eric M. Taylor Center, according to the city’s Department of Correction. The latest inmate marked the eighth person to die in a city-run jail facility this year, with another dying shortly after being released. That total already exceeds the number of inmate deaths in all of 2024 when five detainees died at the short-stay Bronx correctional complex.

Alternative Correctional Models

Officials from Massachusetts, North Dakota and Oklahoma toured four German prisons where inmates wore street clothes, maintained their right to vote, cooked their own meals, played in soccer leagues and learned skills like animal husbandry and carpentry. A growing number of American states are looking abroad for ideas that can be adapted to their state prison systems. A growing number of American states are looking abroad for ideas that can be adapted to their state prison systems. The efforts are still small, dwarfed by the sheer size of the American prison population, and limited by political and financial roadblocks. Prison conditions are not a priority for voters, polls show, and changes are sometimes unwelcome. Prisoner advocates say the changes make communities safer by better preparing prisoners for their eventual release, and create a less stressful environment for prison workers. But the real catalyst is that U.S. prisons are in crisis, struggling with severe staffing shortages, crumbling facilities and frequent violence.

Technology

Technology’s impact on the effectiveness of law enforcement can be seen through highly visible implementations including the use of body-worn cameras on police officers and cloud-based solutions to store digital evidence. However, county jails are currently lacking technologies that would offer a similar decisive advantage in their setting. Using bio-tracked technology for behavioral profiling of inmates will soon be an option to help deputies and correctional officers do their jobs more effectively and with better outcomes for inmate safety from self-harm. By employing wearable technologies that track vital signs, emotional states and other biometric indicators, authorities will have real-time data to anticipate and address health crises before they escalate.

Correctional Healthcare Vendors

Wellpath

El Paso County has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with a paraplegic man who sustained injuries under the watch of former medical provider WellPath in the El Paso County jail. The lawsuit, filed in 2023, alleged that former inmate Alexandro Duran developed pressure sores during his time in the jail that resulted in a medical furlough and long-term health issues. The jail medical provider at the time, WellPath, did not provide Duran with the accommodations necessary to prevent injuries as a person paralyzed from the waist down by a previous spinal cord injury, the suit alleged.

Wexford

After decades of protest from prisoner’s rights activists, change is coming to the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) health care system. A June 23rd memo announced that the IDOC is abandoning contract negotiations with Wexford Health Sources, who had won a ten year, $4 billion dollar contract renewal at the end of 2023. The Transition Oversight Committee will support the move to Centurion’s services, assuring that “our priority remains delivering high-quality medical and mental health services to those in our care.” Still, Centurion has faced its share of controversy and lawsuits across the states it operates in, and in recent years has been accused of bid-rigging for contracts. It now rests on IDOC’s oversight to determine whether Wexford’s legacy will continue under a new face.

Southern Health Partners

The parents of a man who died alone in a Colorado jail cell after an ulcer burned a hole in his digestive tract and left him in what they said was excruciating pain for about 15 hours filed a federal lawsuit, accusing the jail's nurses and sheriff's deputes of ignoring his cries for help. The lawsuit blames them, local government officials and Southern Health Partners for failing to stop the death of Daniel Foard in 2023 by taking him to the hospital. Foard, 32, was a cook at a brewpub and user of fentanyl who was arrested for failing to appear in court. After being segregated and monitored for withdrawal from the synthetic opioid, he began vomiting and complained of stomach pain after being put in a regular jail cell, it said.