A lawsuit accuses a New Mexico child welfare investigator of tracking a 17-year-old runaway to El Paso, where he improperly took custody of her infant daughter and brought the child back to New Mexico.
Hope Waggoner, the infant’s mother, and Jamie Torres, the infant’s father, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in state District Court in Santa Fe. They allege the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department improperly took their infant daughter in February 2025 even though she had never been in CYFD custody before and was living in Texas at the time. They claim CYFD refused to give the infant girl back to them and that she lived in New Mexico’s foster care system for weeks before a court finally intervened.
Waggoner was living in a foster home in Las Cruces in February 2025 when she took her newborn daughter to El Paso to live with Torres. Jacob Torres, an investigator with the New Mexico Children Youth and Families Department (no relation to Jamie Torres) went after her.
“A CYFD investigator ventured into Texas and — based on ‘concerns’ about a baby’s El Paso home — abducted the baby and brought her to New Mexico against her parents’ wishes,” attorney Benjamin Gubernick wrote in the lawsuit.
He added, “Just as a mudslide drags down everything around it, CYFD’s incompetence has now spilled over to neighboring states.”
CYFD spokesperson Jake Thompson declined to respond to the allegations.
“Due to the nature of pending litigation, it is our policy not to comment,” he wrote in an email.
In response to a question about general circumstances in which CYFD might take custody of a child in another state, he wrote, “CYFD always acts first in the best interest of the child,” before declining to comment further.
The lawsuit, which names only CYFD as a defendant, seeks punitive and other damages, as well as attorney’s fees and other costs related to litigating the case.
The couple also filed a lawsuit in federal court in Texas last year. That case, which names Jacob Torres as a defendant, is currently scheduled for a jury trial in August.
En Route to El Paso, the couple had an argument, and police in Socorro, Texas, just outside of El Paso, detained Waggoner while Texas child protective services agents responded, according to the lawsuit.
Socorro police told Jacob Torres the Texas Child Protective Services agents had already responded to the situation but had left.
“Instead of deferring to Texas CPS’ judgment, Jacob decided it would be ‘contrary to the welfare’ ” of the infant girl to leave her in Texas. He loaded both the infant girl and Waggoner into his car and drove them back to Las Cruces, the lawsuit alleges.
The infant girl, though, had never been taken into CYFD custody, the lawsuit noted.
Jacob Torres refused Waggoner’s requests for the girl to be dropped off at home in Texas and rebuffed Jamie Torres’ demands for CYFD to return his daughter, the lawsuit states.
It was not clear from the lawsuit if Waggoner was returned to her foster home. The complaint does note she called Jacob Torres to try to get her daughter back, but he declined out of concern she would flee to Texas again.
The next day, Jacob Torres called Jamie Torres to inform him CYFD “had decided to keep” the girl. For the next month, she lived in New Mexico foster care, and Jamie Torres was not allowed to visit her, the lawsuit alleges.
In late March of 2025, a court dismissed CYFD’s bid for custody for “lack of jurisdiction” and the girl was returned to her father in Texas.