The New Mexico Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit after they say their investigation into the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department found the department was not protecting children.
The investigation into CYFD began in April of 2025 after 16-year-old Jaydun Garcia took his own life while in CYFD custody. While the investigation was only planned to look into this incident, it quickly grew into a report that amassed over 20,000 pages of records and over 150 interviews, including law enforcement personnel, child abuse prosecutors, foster parents, guardians ad litem, and former CYFD employees uncovering what the NMDOJ says is “a pattern of systemic failures that has repeatedly placed children in harm's way across the state.”
During a press conference, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the report “the most comprehensive overview of that agency perhaps in its history” and said it shows “institutional failure but more importantly by moral failure.”
“A failure on the part of the leadership and the public administrators in that building and in that agency who have been incapable and unable to right the ship and create a system that truly protects the most vulnerable,” Torrez said.
The report found that CYFD failed to complete accurate investigations with missing interviews, incomplete home visits, and inconsistent safety assessments allowing abuse and neglect to go undetected. These failures, the report says, led to children being left in an unsafe environment and in some cases lead to their deaths.
Sean Sullivan, Special Counsel to the Attorney General, said that while CYFD does have a staffing issue, there are more foundational issues with the department.
“The deeper piece to me is that there is a cultural orientation in that building to reunify those children with their biological parents at all costs. The Attorney General is clear, we are not against children being reunited with families but we want them to be healthy families,” Sullivan said.
“You can either remove the children and put them into better situations and not give services to the parents or you can give the services to the parents before you return the children. CYFD does neither,” Sullivan said.
The report continues by highlighting that when children are taken into state custody, they are met with unsafe conditions, frequent foster home changes and worsening mental health outcomes.
According to the press release, “14 children have died in circumstances tied to lapses in CYFD's decision-making and oversight.”
Additionally, the report states that the department has used the confidentiality laws to keep information from law enforcement including the NMDOJ. This use of the confidentiality laws is what sparked the lawsuit and the NMDOJ hopes that it will change the law to protect children and not “insulate a government agency from scrutiny.”
In addition to this, the report also states that CYFD has retaliated against foster parents by removing children from their care and others for criticizing the department.
Sullivan said that this threat complicated their investigation.
“Former employees, foster parents, they were afraid that their children would be removed from their home if they raised issues about CYFD on the record and so it took a great deal of courage and bravery for those individuals to come in and share their stories,” Sullivan said.
KRWG Public Media reached out to CYFD for comment and was directed to a statement regarding the report where that said “it’s clear that it underplays or ignores significant, measurable progress the department has made in the last seven months — progress acknowledged by outside partners, the plaintiffs and co-neutrals in the Kevin S. settlement and sister agencies.”
The statement continued by saying that “the death of any child is a tragedy” and that CYFD has “zero tolerance for retribution or retaliation.”
