New Mexico AG sues for return of teen forced to cross border by foster care staff

The New Mexico attorney general is requesting the state's foster care system work to return a 15-year-old American citizen from Mexico after staff took the child to a Texas border crossing and allegedly forced him to walk across the border to be reunited to his estranged mother.

A civil lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Raúl Torrez against New Mexico's Children, Youth and Families Department said its staff drove the minor to El Paso, Texas, on July 6. The complaint, filed July 28, said the youth was instructed to cross the border bridge alone to find his mother, a Mexican national who was arrested on drug-related charges and deported earlier this year.

Torrez’s office is also asking a state judge to issue a temporary restraining order to block future reunifications that involve removing children from the U.S., unless those have court approval.

“The State of New Mexico cannot claim to protect children while abandoning one of its own at an international border,” Torrez said in a news release.

The documents said the child crossed into Mexico, wasn't immediately able to find his mother and then ran back across several lanes of traffic and reentered the U.S.

At that time, U.S. Customs and Border Protection urged New Mexico's child welfare agency to drive the child back to New Mexico, the attorney general's complaint says. But the documents state staff refused and allegedly said the child was now a “Texas problem” before leaving him at the border.

“The most important thing is that the child is safe and living with his mother, who CYFD has been in frequent contact with,” said Jake Thompson, a CYFD spokesperson in a statement Wednesday. “CYFD is reviewing the complaint and the order and will respond to them in court.”

After the border incident, the 15-year-old was left with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the complaint states. Despite efforts to communicate with CYFD, Texas officials were allegedly forced to return the child to his mother in Mexico weeks later, according to the complaint. Email and phone messages to the Texas welfare agency were not returned Thursday.

Torrez said the boy remains in Mexico with his mother despite multiple attempts to reenter the U.S. Torrez called the case part of a broader pattern of neglect within the state’s foster care system and demanded CYFD staff do what they could to repatriate the teenager.

In a statement, CYFD denied the child’s safety was ever at risk and said his mother had requested he be reunited with her in Mexico. They said staff conducted two virtual home visits, concluding the situation was safe for him.

CYFD’s Office of Advocacy includes immigration specialists, which help children reunite with family members in other countries, according to its website .

“There is nothing in New Mexico state law that prohibits reuniting a child with a parent in another country, assuming it is done safely,” said Cristen Conley, director at the Corinne Wolfe Center for Child and Family Justice at the University of New Mexico.

In April, the New Mexico Department of Justice released a 200-page report detailing what it alleged were systemic failures in the welfare agency that meant children were returned to dangerous environments while department staff prioritized reunification over safety. The case also comes as the Trump administration seeks to deport immigrant children by accessing data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement and attempting to bypass previous court rulings .

After the border incident, the teenager contacted the Office of the Child Advocate, an independent government watchdog that monitors the child welfare system, which eventually referred the case to the New Mexico Department of Justice.

The child's parents are two Mexican nationals, but he had been living with his siblings and godmother in the U.S. and hadn't had contact with either parent in years, according to the attorney general's complaint.

According to the complaint, the godmother attempted to send him to Mexico to live with family earlier this summer, but he ran away and ended up at a New Mexico hospital near the border. When he was ready to be discharged in June, the hospital refused to release him to his godmother because she was not the official guardian and instead contacted CYFD. He eventually was placed in foster care, the complaint reads.

Torrez's office alleges that CYFD didn't conduct proper risk assessments of the child's mother and instructed a minor to cross an international border on foot without an adult. Documents also say the child has a heart condition that requires daily medication, but CYFD staff didn't make a sufficient attempt to ensure continued medical care following the reunification.

In a statement, CYFD said the boy had been living in an informal guardianship with a couple in New Mexico identified as godparents. The godparents petitioned the court in June to end their informal guardianship, leaving the boy without a legal guardian in the U.S. CYFD also said that the child’s siblings have since relocated with their godparents across the border and the siblings now live with their mother as well. ___

Schuettler is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.