An 8-month-old boy reportedly exposed to drugs at birth was found dead in his parents’ North Valley home late last month, according to the Albuquerque Police Department.
Weeks later, details in the case are still sparse.
The New Mexican filed a request with the state Children, Youth and Families Department for all records required by law to be released when a child dies on the state’s watch. Days later, records custodian Kathleen Hardy denied the request, writing the records requested were “confidential under NMSA 1978 §32A-4-33(D).”
Hardy then referred the matter to the agency’s general counsel, Amanda Romero, who told The New Mexican the exemption limits record release to people who are “conducting bona fide research or investigations, the results of which shall provide the department information on child abuse and neglect that would be useful to the department in developing policy and practice.”
Reporters do not qualify, Romero said. Who does qualify?
Typically, records are provided to researchers who demonstrate they are conducting bona fide analyses of records and then explain their work and how it will be useful to the department, spokesperson Jake Thompson wrote in an email. But ultimately, it is the agency that determines who qualifies.
In the case of The New Mexican, “the requestor is not seeking records to conduct bona fide research, therefore the department declines to provide them,” Thompson wrote.
“CYFD carefully adheres to all federal and state laws and their requirements as they pertain to child welfare in New Mexico,” he wrote. “This includes an inviolate commitment to transparency; to providing factual, accurate and timely information from our official records to the public and media; and to ensuring that we protect the rights to privacy of every New Mexican we serve. … The department believes it has followed the letter and spirit of the law in denying releasing the requested CYFD records.”
Sen. Katy Duhigg, an Albuquerque Democrat who last year sponsored legislation to amend state law governing what CYFD must release, said this is not the outcome she envisioned.
“We have to take that [out] because we can’t let the people who are in charge of the information be the ones who decide if a reporter talking about it is useful to them or not, because they will never find that it is useful,” she said.
Requests stymied
The boy’s cause of death was not immediately determined by Albuquerque police investigators.
However, drugs were found throughout the home, and his parents, Mark Armijo and Shawna Sitz, were arrested for violating conditions of their probation, spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos wrote in an Aug. 31 email. He added that “toxicology results will take some time to be returned” and that he could not release records related to the investigation at the time.
News station KRQE 13 reported the boy had drugs in his system when he was born but was allowed to go home with his mother because she tested positive for drugs she had prescriptions for. The news station noted state officials repeatedly visited the home and found it to be clean and stocked with food.
A separate public records request The New Mexican submitted to Albuquerque police was deemed to be “excessively burdensome and/or broad,” and has not yet been returned.
‘Bona fide research’
CYFD is required to release a host of records when children die, including information concerning people involved in maltreatment proceedings like social records, psychological reports, transcripts and recordings of children’s statements of abuse and medical reports related to investigations.
But reporters are not the only ones being turned away.
Emily Putnam-Hornstein, a researcher and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said her team made a similar request to CYFD as part of a national study that collects information from each state about children who die from abuse or neglect. That project, titled “Lives Cut Short,” also tracks states’ laws and practices on releasing fatality information.
Putnam-Hornstein’s team was also denied. An August 2025 email from Hardy indicates CYFD rejected the team for reasons similar to the ones cited in its denial of The New Mexican‘s request.
There are different types of research considered for exemption of confidentiality laws by states, Putnam-Hornstein noted.
In more academic ventures conducting human subject research, she said researchers often go through rigorous processes to ethically set up what are essentially data sharing agreements with states. Those agreements are to obtain and analyze thousands or even millions of records containing sensitive information like Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other identifying pieces of information.
That process can involve reviews of proposed studies by ethics boards of the universities researchers work for and proof information obtained from states can be kept safe, Putnam-Hornstein said.
That type of human subject research — which she said is usually what states mean by “bona fide research” — is largely intended to produce statistics and create generalized information. Analysts on those projects are barred from releasing identifying information or discussing individual cases.
Many states have separate sets of laws governing academic and journalistic requests for information, though New Mexico does not seem to, she said.
Putnam-Hornstein noted the Lives Cut Short project intentionally did not go through the human subject research process in any of the states it gathered information from, including New Mexico. Still, she argued the project is bona fide research and that New Mexico law is “arbitrary in that they get to decide what type of research would be useful to them when it comes to practice and policy.”
“I am definitely a bona fide researcher, and the Lives Cut Short project is definitely bona fide research. It is a public policy research project,” Putnam-Hornstein said.
Hardy referred The New Mexican to Romero as a point of contact for potential bona fide researchers who may obtain the records. Romero did not acknowledge follow-up questions about who qualifies, who makes that determination and how.
Transparency push
State lawmakers revisited New Mexico’s confidentiality laws in child abuse and neglect cases in 2025 as part of a wide-ranging package of child welfare legislation known as Senate Bill 42.
That measure originally contained an effort to make information related to the deaths of children involved in abuse and neglect proceedings available to journalists and the public. However, it was amended in the final days of the legislative session to include a provision allowing unredacted records to be released only to researchers whose work could prove useful to the department — a “loophole” that effectively allows CYFD to deny records at will, Duhigg said.
New Mexico Foundation for Open Government legal director Amanda Lavin said CYFD is likely not skirting state law as written, although she noted the agency is “not a transparent organization” and has issues in other areas with releasing information.
“CYFD operates in total secrecy, and there’s no way to know what they’re doing, how investigations are being conducted. That accountability piece is missing, and it’s not good for anyone,” she said.
Duhigg said she plans to close the loophole, as the “whole point of this change was to create transparency around fatalities and near-fatalities because the public has an interest in knowing when something that serious is happening with children who are in state custody.”
The privacy of children and families is important but not at the expense of children today and in the future, Duhigg said.
“This stuff is all complicated because we need to know what’s happening,” she said. If “we’re not fixing what’s happening because we don’t know — then that’s a big problem.”
Thompson said CYFD “stands ready to work with members of the Legislature on refining state law and policy in ways that improve the care, support and services New Mexico’s vulnerable children receive so they can be safe and thrive.”
Other states
Some states are far more transparent than New Mexico, Putnam-Hornstein said.
She cited an instance in which a reporter in California obtained through state law records like coroner’s reports, structured decision-making reports detailing child abuse case management histories and other documents.
Some states, like Arizona, proactively release information about child deaths including summaries of case histories and the names and ages of dead children, Putnam-Hornstein said.
“One of the purposes of Lives Cut Short is to actually push for much greater transparency. But I would say that I do not think New Mexico is being particularly transparent,” she said.
Esteban Candelaria is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. He covers child welfare and the state Children, Youth and Families Department. Learn more about Report for America at reportforamerica.org.
