A report issued Wednesday by the New Mexico Department of Justice outlines a litany of failures by the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department to protect children in foster care.
One notable finding in that report: When abuse occurs in a “congregate care facility” — a type of group living arrangement that includes youth crisis shelters, residential treatment centers and acute care hospitals — that abuse is recorded in an internal licensing database and not shared with foster care caseworkers, investigators, attorneys and others responsible for overseeing children’s care.
In most cases, instances of abuse or neglect are entered into CYFD’s FACTS system, a database that holds a vast array of information on a given child, from foster placements to safety and risk assessments. That information is critical for a child’s caretakers, the NMDOJ report said.
Not mentioned in the NMDOJ report is CYFD’s use of its internal licensing database, called SharePoint, to document cases of abuse that occur in CYFD office buildings. Child welfare advocates say that practice has kept caseworkers and attorneys from accessing information about children they’re tasked with protecting.
One example is the case of a teenager who goes by Jacie, who spent months living in CYFD’s Albuquerque office. In an interview with Searchlight in November 2024, Jacie described an incident in which a security guard approached her as she was having a loud conversation on her cell phone in front of the main entrance of CYFD’s Albuquerque office.
“He yelled in my face,” Jacie recalled. “And I’m a moody teenager, so I yelled back in his face.” The guard then put her in a “restraint hold,” she said, holding her hands behind her back as he tried to take her to the ground. “I gave up resisting and he pinned me to the ground with his knee in the middle of my back. I was like, ‘I can’t breathe, get off of me!’” The incident left her shaken — and with deep bruises on her legs, arms and torso.
During another office stay in Sept. 2025, Jacie had a second physical altercation in the office — this time with a CYFD employee named Dajae Robinson. As Jacie describes it, she stepped in between the employee and another younger child in the midst of a confrontation.
“I was like, don’t lay hands on her, don’t ever lay hands on her,” Jacie said in an interview last year. She alleged Robinson then grabbed Jacie by the throat with her hands and started to squeeze.
“When she choked me, I couldn’t breathe, so I ended up kicking her to get her off of me,” Jacie said. “When I did that, she grabbed my hair, pulled my hair down to waist level, and started punching me in my face.”
A New Mexico State Police report included in a criminal complaint against Robinson matches Jacie’s account, describing surveillance video showing Robinson grabbing Jacie by the neck before throwing an “uppercut” with a “closed right fist” and striking Jacie in the face. Robinson cocked her fist back for another punch, the report says, but CYFD staff restrained her before she could hit Jacie again.
Robinson was fired and charged with aggravated battery. The charges were later dropped.
Jacie’s attorney, Darlene Gomez, has tried for months to get CYFD’s documentation of those events. But the documents were filed under the internal SharePoint system, Gomez says, and as a result, CYFD has not provided them.
“It’s utterly inexcusable that these incidents are documented and held in a system that attorneys cannot access,” Gomez said. “We have to provide legal representation to our clients, and we can’t do that when we don’t have records of what happened.”
On March 27, Gomez initiated a court process to force CYFD to allow her to review the department’s records of Jacie’s stay in the CYFD office. That process is pending as of today.
Jacie’s case reflects another allegation in the NMDOJ report: that CYFD consistently refuses to provide records to investigators. In the course of their investigation, the attorney general’s office wrote they were met with a consistent response, which youth attorneys say they experience regularly: “deflect, delay, and withhold.”
“Whether due to an indefensibly expansive interpretation of confidentiality laws or a motivation to restrict access to materials that may result in public scrutiny, the result is the same: CYFD has obstructed the NMDOJ’s investigation.
I sure hope and pray that there is some very strict accountability for the “leaders” of this agency. Good, bad or indifferent, these children are our future leaders. You know this abuse has been going on for a very long time. Are we raising those who only know what life is about from violence? No wonder the country is as messed up as it is. We have to do better.