New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is suing the state’s child welfare department after reports it delivered a fifteen-year-old boy to the Mexican border and told him to cross on his own against his will to reunite with his estranged mother.
The Albuquerque Journal reported the Children, Youth, and Families Department claimed to have evaluated the mother’s home and deemed it safe, even though it lacked jurisdiction to enter Mexico. The agency later disclosed it interviewed the mother and saw images of the home in a mobile phone interview.
Torrez spoke to KUNM on Tuesday, the day the lawsuit against the CYFD was announced. KUNM has reached out to CYFD officials for comment, but did not yet get a response.
KUNM: CYFD has claimed that state law has mandated reunification with the mother. What do you think about that argument legally, and is there any truth behind what they're saying?
RAÚL TORREZ: I think the department is failing to understand that the requirements of due process in this country demand that a 15-year-old who has not spent time with his mother, or virtually no time with his mother, for a decade, and whose mother has already been the subject of abuse and neglect allegations in the past, who was deported to Mexico after she was arrested for a new drug-related offense, that the department failed fundamentally to ensure his health, his well-being, and safety. But more than that, they didn't give him the basic due process that he's entitled to. As a 15-year-old, not as a young child, he is entitled to an attorney in a children's court process where he has the ability to express his own wishes. As I understand it, it was very clear from his reaction, from his repeated sort of protests to everyone who was involved in this process, that he did not want to live with his mother, and so instead of honoring that and going through a formal process where all of that could have been adjudicated, they actually dismissed the petition in in the middle of that process, short-circuited any opportunity for a district court, a children's court judge, to evaluate his position, and instead took him to his foster home, gave him five minutes to pack his things and drove him directly to the border. And not only that, they then lost contact with the mother, and this is included in the complaint as well.
So, despite the fact that no one was picking up the phone when they were calling her, they sent him over an international border at night with no idea whatsoever that there was going to be someone to ensure his safety on the other side. Then, when he attempted on his own to return to the United States, CYFD got into a confrontation not only with Texas child safety officials, but also the Border Patrol, who had to remind CYFD that they didn't have the power to force an American citizen back over into another country, and so from the very beginning, this case is emblematic of a lack of professionalism, a lack of competence, a lack of basic judgment, and a lack of basic decency. Who does this to a 15-year-old without going through even a very basic process of ensuring his safety? As far as I know, they've never set foot in this woman's home in Mexico. This is a woman, mind you, that has a history of drug abuse. From what I can tell, they called her on the phone, and I guess by Zoom, asked her to show them around the place. I mean that that doesn't meet the basic standards of ensuring that this child's going to be in a safe place before he's returned to her custody.
KUNM: You mentioned that this might be kind of emblematic of something, and I'm curious how this case ties into any broader findings that you might have regarding CYFD — whether it be about using confidentiality laws or prioritizing reunification numbers over child safety, or just any sort of behavior that you've seen in the past — how might it tie into a larger pattern?
Torrez: The New Mexico Department of Justice issued a 200 plus page report back in April detailing the findings after a year of a pretty exhaustive investigation, and this case falls squarely in the sort of core findings that we had. We recognized that the agency had placed priority on reunification at the expense of safety. That they had short-circuited their own processes and procedures because it served the interests of adults working in that agency, and that they routinely failed to follow their own policies and protocols when it became clear that a placement, including a placement potentially like this one, was going to be difficult. But the problem is that there's another layer that was not really addressed in our report, and that has to do with the obstruction that the Child Advocate has faced. So as you may know, last session the legislature created an oversight body and created the Office of the Child Advocate, who is supposed to have access in real time to information and is supposed to have a direct line of communication. And based on the preliminary discussions that she has had with us, she has run into roadblock after roadblock, and obstruction after obstruction in exercising her oversight responsibilities. I think that is indicative of a larger cultural issue inside this agency, where there is too much defensive posturing, there is too much emphasis on how they are going to spin and defend and justify decisions that, frankly, on their face, I don't think are defensible, and it leads me to the conclusion that it is time for the next governor and the next legislature to place the wholesale reconstitution of our of our child safety system at the very top of their legislative agenda. We're way past the point where people think some minor modifications or minor reforms to CYFD are going to cut it. And I think if you look at the reaction — the bipartisan reaction — of policymakers in Santa Fe, there is absolute outrage at the facts and circumstances related to this case, as there should be, because it simply isn't defensible.
KUNM: Beyond asking the court to order the boy's safe return and block unauthorized international removals, are there any concrete structural remedies that you are seeking against CYFD?
Torrez: We're looking for an order from the court that is comprehensive in terms of ensuring that due process violations like this never occur again, and that established protocols are in place. And, if we are successful in that lawsuit, I can imagine presenting the court with an opportunity to empower the child advocate to have a direct view on whether or not there is compliance with the basics of due process, and whether or not the policies that are at issue in this particular case have been sufficiently modified to ensure that this never happens again. But the problem again is that we are one case at a time trying to fix and correct one deficiency at a time, and so while that may be a good short-term measure to try and protect kids from this particular type of harm, it doesn't solve the long-term and more complicated challenge of crafting a comprehensive overhaul of this entire structure of this entire system, which does include recruiting a sufficient number of social workers, maintaining proper oversight and accountability. One of the things that was stripped out of the original child advocate bill was the ability of the child advocate to issue subpoenas. I think that is something that absolutely has to be restored because she cannot be at the mercy of an agency that clearly doesn't have an interest in sharing timely information about what's been going on. So all of this, including the 50 very specific legislative proposals that we included in our investigative report, we've engaged with the Speaker of the House. We're engaging with legislative leaders. We have offered to work with them to draft a comprehensive solution. I don't think, sadly, that this is something that's going to be fixed before we have new leadership in Santa Fe and a new chief executive in January. But I also believe that whoever wins that election, this must be their top priority because there simply is no excuse for leaving vulnerable kids in situations like this.
KUNM: Do you happen to know what the state's current knowledge is regarding the 15-year-old's location, safety, and well-being in Mexico right now?
Torrez: I don't. As I understand it, the Child Advocate had a conversation with that child recently, and based on my understanding, the child may not have felt free to fully communicate his wishes, and so they were working on an opportunity for the Child Advocate to be able to speak freely with that child. And I don't know yet if that has happened. I do not know his current location.
KUNM: The suit alleges that CYFD urged federal authorities to block the teenagers' reentry to the U.S.. Was this an official agency directive? And does your investigation show who specifically authorized that request?
Torrez: I don't know, but this is certainly something that we are going to be exploring, and we'll get to the bottom of, in due course.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
