The New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department is accused in a new lawsuit of unlawfully denying public records with information about the June 2025 death of a 10-month-old girl in foster care.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, alleges CYFD denied six record requests filed by attorney Aaron Whiteley, who is representing the estate of Skylar Magana, the girl who died. Attorneys are pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit in the case and say the state flouted exceptions in New Mexico’s confidentiality law requiring information and documents to be released in cases when children die on the state’s watch.
“While I do understand there are certain privacy concerns inherent in proceedings with children and parents … for fatalities, the public interest in understanding those cases and what happened and how can we prevent those in the future overrides that,” Whiteley said in an interview.
“CYFD has no comment on active litigation and looks forward addressing issues in the case in court,” spokesman Jake Thompson wrote in an email.
The lawsuit highlights what some officials say are ongoing problems of CYFD secrecy and failures to release records and information despite an effort by lawmakers in 2025 to revise state statute to bring more transparency to cases where children die while under the state’s care.
The lawsuit seeks a writ of mandamus, injunction order or other legal action from a judge requiring CYFD to produce records responsive to the requests, a review to ensure any redactions are lawful and other attorney costs and relief.
Skylar was born on Aug. 17, 2024, and was quickly taken from her parents and into the custody of CYFD because she was born with drugs in her system, the lawsuit states.
The following May, she was placed in foster care in Albuquerque. The next month, first responders were called to the home after Skylar had a seizure and then became unresponsive. She was rushed to University of New Mexico Hospital, where healthcare providers specializing in caring for children who may have suffered abuse or neglect determined the girl had brain bleeding likely caused by “abusive head trauma,” according to court records.
The girl’s foster mother, Denise Vasquez-Browley, was caring for the girl at the time. Police found she sent text messages and made internet searches indicating she may have been struggling with depression, anxiety, feeling overwhelmed and feeling aggressive to her children. For example, internet searches discovered by police and cited in court records included: “women how to dealnwith(sic) anger,” “am I depressed?” and “what dies(sic) it mean when you want to bite your infant.”
Ultimately, Skylar suffered brain death, and Vasquez-Browley was charged with intentional child abuse resulting in death.
Her attorney, Todd Farkas, declined to comment.
On Aug. 28, Whiteley filed six public requests seeking documents and information which, according to state statute, should be exempt from laws requiring confidentiality because they involve children who died on the state’s watch.
One of those laws, for example, requires that “after learning that a child fatality or near fatality has occurred and that there is reasonable suspicion that the fatality or near fatality was caused by abandonment, abuse or neglect, the department shall upon written request release” the name, age and cause of death of the child, among other details. The agency must also release a synopsis of previous abuse and neglect reports.
That law goes on to require the department — after completing an investigation finding abuse, neglect or abandonment caused a child to die — to release a summary of its probe, its file on the child and other critical documents.
But in response to Whiteley’s public records requests, CYFD effectively denied them completely and offered little explanation on the rejections, writing in most cases that the sought records were confidential and “exempt from production under the Inspection of Public Records Act.”
The denials flouted state law, the lawsuit alleges. Whiteley challenged the agency’s responses in a follow-up email, writing he would provide “CYFD an opportunity to respond and cure its violations of IPRA” by the end of Sept. 21 before he filed a lawsuit.
However, Whiteley received no substantive response from the agency, he wrote.
“Ultimately, we’re just basically trying to get CYFD to comply with the law, or at least make a better legal arguments than ‘Oh we don’t have to. No,’ ” Whiteley 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.
