On August 11 , New Mexico Speaker of the House Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque accompanied by New Mexico House Representatives Michelle Paulene Abeyta (D-To’Hajiilee), Meredith Dixon of Albuquerque, Pamelya Herndon of Albuquerque, Christine Chandler of Los Alamos, Eleanor Chávez of Albuquerque and Janelle Anyanonu of Albuquerque, held a news conference to announce child well-being priorities for the 2027 legislative session and to announce major reforms to overhaul the Children, Youth and Family’s Department (CYFD). Amid growing frustrations among lawmakers that CYFD has continually failed to protect children in its care, House Democrats announced a slate of proposals aimed at reforming the agency, ranging from further empowering the department’s newest watchdog office to tightly regulating the use of group homes and other facilities to completely overhauling the agency’s governance.
Five months ahead of the state’s 60-day legislative session, House Democrats are proposing a sweeping overhaul of the Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD), an agency they say has been plagued by a two-decade crisis. The House Lawmakers are pushing for a total culture shift focused on accountability, arguing that past reforms to the agency were watered down. Currently, there are about 2,220 children in state custody. House Speaker Javier Martinez says the state is failing those children and he said this:
“There are still too many children today — the most vulnerable amongst us — who are supposed to be cared for by the state of New Mexico, and yet the state has been failing them … House Democrats stand ready to, for once and for all, fix this agency. … This caucus is really thinking outside that box in an effort to make this agency what it once was in the 90s, which is a model for the rest of the country. … A lot of people are elevated to management for whatever reason, and caseloads are incredibly hard to manage for the people on the ground. I do think you need leadership, and you need a shift in culture. These stories, unfortunately, repeat themselves over and over and over again, and our children deserve better.”
The New Mexico House Democrats will be introducing a set of bills in the 2027 legislative session aimed at reforming the state’s embattled Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD), which oversees both child protective services and juvenile justice. The announcement comes soon after the news that the department had dropped off a 15-year-old American citizen at a border crossing last month in El Paso, Texas, where he was told to travel to Mexico to meet his estranged mother, who was involved in an abuse case.
The New Mexico House Democrats are proposing five sweeping reforms to CYFD. The proposed legislation includes:
- Reintroducing legislation to strip the governor of control over CYFD in favor of placing governance of CYFD into the hands of a independent, three-person commission. The independent, three-member commission would oversee daily operations and policy. Rep. Eleanor Chavez said the commission “would be made up of child welfare and juvenile justice experts, who would be responsible for hiring the secretary or superintendent of CYFD.” The proposal for a 3 person commission comes after years of turnover, with CYFD going through five secretaries in six years.
- Granting the Office of the Child Advocate access to case records, interviews with CYFD staff, and the power to subpoena witnesses. The Office of the Child Advocate was created by a 2025 bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Michelle Abeyta, D-To’hajiilee. Giving the Office of the Child Advocate, which is the independent watchdog over CYFD, more authority is a key component. Abeyta said this: “This new legislation will rightly provide the child advocate with full, real-time access to the agency’s case management system. It’ll make clear that there should be no redactions or manipulation of records prior to sharing. It will give the office authority to interview CYFD staff regarding pending investigations.”
- Regulating the use of congregate care, such as group homes, by banning its use for children under 12 years old, requiring independent clinical certification to ensure it is necessary, and mandating a higher burden of proof every 30 days for the state to justify keeping children in facilities. CYFD has long struggled to protect children in its care in a number of ways. Children in congregate care facilities, like group homes, have reportedly not had access to necessary services, like in-person therapy, and some have died or come to other serious harm while staying there. Christine Chandler said this: “Young children are best cared for in family settings and are especially vulnerable to the trauma of being held in congregate care.”
- Requiring CYFD investigators probing child abuse allegations to wear body-worn cameras, like police, and maintain digital notes, while also establishing a statewide child maltreatment registry. The proposal would require investigators to wear body cameras during interviews and maintain digital notes. It would establish a statewide abuse and neglect registry and require sworn testimony from all CYFD employees, placing them under oath and subject to perjury. Additionally, the legislation would create a dedicated team within protective services to investigate fatalities and critical incidents involving children in state custody. All findings from this team would be provided to the CYFD secretary, the child advocate, and the attorney general.
- Revising state confidentiality laws to expand access of information to researchers and members of the news media.
Speaker of the House Javier Martínez said Democrats have not yet determined if the reform will be introduced as one massive bill or several smaller ones. There is no official price tag for the proposal, though Martinez said they will not spare no expense when it comes to protecting children.
GOING FOREWARD WITHOUT GOVERNOR LUJAN GRISHAM
House Democrats say they have faced obstruction from both the state Senate and from Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. They have cited House Bill 5, the 2025 measure creating the Office of the Child Advocate, which state senators ultimately watered down. Lujan Grisham also later used her power to veto specific provisions from the state budget to strip nearly $1.7 million from the office. During the August 11 news conference, House Democrats said they see a far more optimistic future for the proposals they presented.
As for clearing the hurdle on the other side of the state Roundhouse, Martínez said he has observed a shift in culture in the state Senate over the past year that he believes will help “get this over the finish line in the most meaningful and impactful way.” Some powerful state senators have long criticized the chamber’s failure to stand behind efforts to get tough on CYFD. Sen. Joseph Cervantes, a Las Cruces Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, last month decried the decision by Democratic and Republican leaders of the chamber to agree to water down HB 5. But he added, “sometimes we have to maybe do things governors don’t want to do, and we won’t be working with this governor any longer.”
REPUBLICANS EXPRESS SKEPTICISM REFUTED BY DEMOCRATS
Not at all surprising, House Republicans are expressing skepticism about the proposals, questioning why Democrats are waiting until now to implement these changes. Republican Rep. Rebecca Dow said this:
“House Republicans and I have been introducing [similar legislation] for years and Democrats have refused to move forward. So their promises for changes in the future, it’s empty promises.”
Dow said hiring highly qualified staff should be the immediate priority. She asserted that blanket programs will not fix the problem, and that only targeted interventions will bring real change. Dow said this:
“That means early and immediate interventions, no loopholes around confidentiality, only reunifying children when their safety is the first priority and they can be safe,”
Democratic lawmakers say they have been pushing for these comprehensive reforms for years, but that the political environment has recently shifted. Speaker Javier Martinez said the renewed push comes down to “an executive that will be supportive of these fixes. And quite frankly, I think that the culture in the state Senate has shifted over the last year or so, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”
CYFD BECOMES ISSUE IN GOVERNORS RACE
What to do with CYFD has become a key issue in the race to become New Mexico’s next governor. That has intensified after recent reports that alleged CYFD staffers dropped a foster teen at the U.S.-Mexico border and instructed him to walk alone into Ciudad Juárez to reunite with his estranged mother.
Lawmakers are saying that reforming CYFD will ultimately boil down to who is the next governor. House Speaker Martinez said this:
“Some of this stuff we’ve run in the past. It’s run into problems in the other chamber. It’s run into opposition from the executive. …What [will] make it different is that we will have an executive that will be supportive of these fixes. … No matter who the governor is, we would expect them to support these reforms if they, in fact, are serious about doing the hard work of improving the state”
Both candidates to succeed Lujan Grisham have indicated they are more on board with significant overhauls of CYFD. Both Democrat Deb Haaland and Republican Gregg Hull candidates have overlap with what they think is needed: they want to replace the department’s secretary, ensure CYFD isn’t short staffed and that those employees are qualified. They also want more transparency.
Democratic nominee Deb Haaland has expressed support for the idea of relinquishing control of the agency in favor of governance by an independent commission and empowering the Office of the Child Advocate. In a recent interview with the Santa Fe New Mexican, she Haaland said this:
“It’s pretty clear that CYFD … needs to be reformed. It needs to restart from the ground up. We need to make sure that we are essentially rebuilding that department.”
Republican gubernatorial nominee Gregg Hull has also said that if elected, he would “go in, identify the failures, and look at what we can do to make those corrections. And then, ultimately, if we need to do a complete overhaul of the system and rebuild CYFD from the ground up — well, then we’ll take that approach.”
Links to quoted or relied upon news sources are here:
REVISITING NMDOJ INVESTIGATION INTO CYFD
On April 8, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez released a scathing 224 page report on the investigation by the New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ) of the New Mexico Children Youth and Family’s Department (CYFD) and its handling of abused and neglected children placed in CYFD care. The investigation report is entitled “Systemic Failures: How CYFD Endangers The Children Its Meant To Protect”. The link to review the entire 224 page report is here:
https://nmdoj.gov/publications/cyfd-report/
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The NMDOJ investigation into the CYFD identified systemic failures that have repeatedly endangered the children CYFD is sworn to protect. According to the report, these failures are not isolated but are pervasive, deeply entrenched, and all too often result in preventable harm to children.
The NMDOJ investigation report contains the following Executive Summary that has been edited for clarity and brevity:
“New Mexico’s child welfare system is in crisis. The New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ) investigation into the Children, Youth and Families Department (“CYFD”) … identified systemic failures that have repeatedly endangered the children CYFD is sworn to protect. These failures are not isolated [and] they are pervasive, deeply entrenched, and too often result in preventable harm
State law is unequivocal: CYFD should strive to preserve and reunify abused and neglected children with their families whenever possible, but when that goal conflicts with a child’s health and safety, the child’s interests must prevail. The NMDOJ investigation makes one fact unmistakable: CYFD has completely inverted that legislative mandate and abandoned its core mission to protect children as its highest duty.
Instead of safeguarding vulnerable children, the Department has prioritized family reunification at virtually any cost—returning children to dangerous caregivers with histories of substantiated abuse or chronic neglect, and who refuse treatment or services to address those underlying issues.
This misalignment between mandate and practice has had devastating consequences, including the deaths of at least seven children since [the] investigation’s inception. And this scale and severity of harm to children over the past year is not an anomaly. New Mexico has long faced disproportionately high levels of maltreatment, repeat maltreatment, and child fatalities compared to national averages.
Interviews, case reviews, and consultation with child welfare experts reveal a troubling pattern: CYFD selectively enforces its own rules—rigidly enforcing these rules when convenient but disregarding or misinterpreting them when compliance requires decisive intervention to protect children. Policies and protocols are often wielded as shields against accountability or disregarded altogether.
When children are injured or killed, CYFD’s instinct is not transparency, but self-preservation—deflecting blame, concealing poor decisions, and protecting its image instead of confronting mistakes and embracing lessons that could prevent future harm.
In addition to routinely delaying removals of children from dangerous environments and prematurely reunifying them with unfit caregivers, other systemic failures have emerged, including:
CYFD’s leadership has lacked the qualifications and commitment necessary to uphold its obligations, fostering a culture of insularity and resistance to oversight. Rather than embracing accountability and reform, the Department has repeatedly deflected scrutiny, degraded internal guardrails, and misused confidentiality protections to obscure its failures.
CYFD has systematically de-professionalized its workforce, forgoing the hiring of licensed social workers and relying on staff that are ill-equipped to handle the complex demands of child welfare practice. Combined with crushing caseloads, inadequate training, and absent supervision, this approach fuels burnout and turnover.
Investigative practices are deeply flawed. CYFD investigators skip essential interviews, neglect mandatory home visits, apply safety and risk assessment tools inconsistently, and rely on hollow safety plans. These flaws are compounded by a misunderstanding of evidentiary standards, allowing obvious abuse and neglect to go unsubstantiated.
Permanency practices are wholly deficient, driven by chronic understaffing, lack of access to trauma-focused services, inaccurate court reports, hearing delays caused by employee unpreparedness, and case management breakdowns that jeopardize child well-being.
Failed implementation of the state’s Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) law leaves over 1,200 drug-affected newborns at risk each year. Untimely guidance, lack of training for medical providers, unenforceable plans of care, and poor oversight have led to repeated tragedies, including preventable deaths from narcotics exposure.
CYFD impedes criminal investigations and devalues the expertise of law enforcement. The Department ignores requests for protective holds or intervention, even amid escalating danger. As a result, children are returned to unsafe environments, leading to repeated police involvement. CYFD’s actions delay or prevent forensic interviews and necessary medical exams, obstructing criminal investigations and prosecutions.
Foster families receive inadequate support, poor communication, and face retaliatory tactics, even as CYFD confronts a critical shortage of non-relative foster homes. These practices erode trust, increase turnover, and jeopardize outcomes for children in state custody.
Instability in the foster care system is worsening, with children experiencing placement moves at nearly twice the national average—with some enduring dozens of disruptive relocations. Beyond breaching legal mandates, the inability to ensure stable homes derails support systems, impairs formation of healthy attachments, and compounds trauma.
CYFD has heavily relied upon office buildings as makeshift placements for children in state custody, exposing them to physical injury, sexual assault, drug use, and severe psychological harm. Housing children in office buildings strips them of privacy, therapeutic care, and the stability of a family setting, while overwhelming staff who must manage chaotic conditions and balance a child’s supervision with daily tasks.
CYFD’s excessive dependence on congregate care facilities—designed only for short-term clinical placements—has led to unsafe conditions characterized by violence, misuse of restraints, staff mistreatment, chronic understaffing, lack of supervision, and even suicide.
The child welfare crisis is not an unavoidable reality, but the direct result of poor leadership, indefensible choices, missed interventions, and a widespread lack of transparency. CYFD’s shortcomings go beyond mere bureaucratic mismanagement—they represent a systematic moral failing—measured in children continuing to be abused, neglected, and lost. The following case studies, documented throughout this report, offer a window into the human cost of that failing.
The Department’s history of empty assurances and half-measures in safeguarding children are no longer acceptable—the price for delay and denial has been too high.
The path for CYFD to restore public trust is clear: acknowledge the depth and impact of their failures, institutionalize accountability, and embrace meaningful, lasting change. CYFD’s future legitimacy—and the safety and well-being of those it serves—depends on a renewed and unwavering commitment to its highest duty: putting children first.”
NMDOJ CONCERNS HIGHLIGHTED
The NMDOJ investigation report highlights the following major concerns:
“CYFD’s failures to make timely and common-sense decisions that prioritize child safety has been a central driver of New Mexico’s child maltreatment crisis. In many cases, CYFD’s chronic inaction has led to extended delays in removing children from dangerous environments or not removing them at all.”
Justice Department investigators found that in many of the most severe abuse and neglect cases discussed in the report, CYFD made efforts to hide its failures, including by doctoring investigators’ accounts. The report states:
“When children are injured or killed, CYFD’s instinct is not transparency, but self-preservation — deflecting blame, concealing poor decisions, and protecting its image instead of confronting mistakes and embracing lessons that could prevent future harm.”
The Justice Department alleged that CYFD also obfuscated its investigation over the past year, resisting requests for child abuse and neglect records and releasing only some of the information requested. CYFD often cited an “inappropriately broad reading” of state laws protecting children’s privacy in abuse and neglect proceedings. The report states:
“CYFD’s approach was consistent: deflect, delay, and withhold. … CYFD’s application of confidentiality operates more as an impediment to transparency and accountability than as a genuine safeguard for the privacy of children and families.”
DAMNING REPORT CONCLUSION
The NMDOJ report ends with the following conclusions:
“The NMDOJ’s investigation points unmistakably to one conclusion: CYFD has wholly abandoned child safety as its guiding principle. The witnesses interviewed and case studies highlighted show the grave harm that can result when CYFD delays removing vulnerable children from dangerous environments or reunifies them with families before underlying safety threats are resolved. Reunification should be the goal, but only when caregivers have meaningfully addressed the conditions that led to removal. A more deliberate child-centered approach is essential to ensure that reunification supports—not undermines—long-term family stability and child well-being.
COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS
The five sweeping reforms the New Mexico House Democrats are proposing are long overdue and need to be enacted. They need to be given serious consideration by the Republicans. Republican Rep. Rebecca Dow said this about the proposals:
“House Republicans and I have been introducing [similar legislation] for years and Democrats have refused to move forward. So their promises for changes in the future, it’s empty promises.”
Republicans need to knock it off with their never ceasing complaints and harping about their past failures with legislation they have sponsored to reform CYFD and make House Speaker Martinez Speaker’s efforts to reform CYFD bipartisan.
The Investigative Report by the New Mexico Department of Justice of CYFD provides more than enough justification for enactment of all the legislation. The NMDOJ’s investigation points unmistakably to one conclusion: CYFD wholly abandoned child safety as its guiding principle to preserve the family unit at all cost. The NMDOJ investigation into the CYFD identified systemic failures that have repeatedly endangered the children CYFD is sworn to protect. The investigation found the failures are not isolated and they are pervasive, deeply entrenched, and too often result in preventable harm. According to the NMDOJ report, the rampant dysfunction within CYFD largely comes down one major issue: prioritizing reunification of children with families at the expense of the child’s safety.
The safety of any child, especially those of tender years who cannot defend themselves against physical abuse or sexual abuse by their own parents, must always take precedence over trying to preserve a family unit that in reality is none existent or so dysfunctional as being incapable providing child care and protection and that is the source of child neglect and abuse.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez has said he plans to work with state lawmakers to pursue legislative reforms of the child welfare system, but he believes the Roundhouse must rebuild CYFD from scratch. Torrez said this:
“I am of the view that the Legislature should start with a blank piece of paper. … Instead of trying to redesign a broken house, start with a blank sheet of paper and build what you think needs to exist from the ground up, and then see if you can map that on to the existing structure. … I’m not sure that you can, to be perfectly honest with you, in part because it’s not only a structural problem, it’s a cultural problem.”
House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, said he did not disagree with Torrez’s suggestion to rebuild CYFD from the ground up. Speaker Martinez has sponsored legislation in the last 3 years to move control of the child welfare agency out from under the governor to an independent commission. He has said CYFD is spread too thin to be effective, given it manages both protective services and juvenile justice programs, a point also made by the Justice Department in its report. Speaker Martínez said this:
“The truth of the matter is, the agency has long outlived its usefulness, quite frankly. The fact that we have the same agency dealing with foster children also dealing with criminal justice is insane, and that has to change.”
Upon release of the report, CYFD and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made excuses and claimed progress over the last several months. The claims of progress were offensive in comparison to the preventable mental and physical damage that has been inflicted upon New Mexico’s children over so many decades because of poor performance and dereliction of duty by CYFD.
Enough is enough! The level of corruption and dereliction of duty by CYFD to New Mexico’s children is so extensive over so many decades that the time has come to remove CYFD from control of the Governor and create a governing commission. All the suffering of New Mexico’s children was preventable and must be stopped immediately.
The 2027 New Mexico Legislature needs to proceed with enactment of the proposed legislation in a bipartisan manner mandating a complete overhaul of CYFD.