New Mexico
CYFD launches new center to keep foster kids from sleeping in offices
NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – Foster teens sleeping overnight in office buildings: it’s a problem the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) has promised to fix, as it struggles to find foster families. Now, the department is opening up what it calls a solution. KRQE News 13 spoke with CYFD about those plans and others who feel its not enough.
“It’s been a long year for me since I came onboard a year ago, in really trying to restructure the agency,” said Teresa Casados, cabinet secretary for CYFD. One of the problems CYFD has dealt with as the state faces a lack of foster families surrounds kids and teens staying overnight in their offices—where conflicts between workers and foster children have escalated to the point of 9-1-1 calls.
The situation—highlighted in a KRQE Investigates report—has been hard to fix according to Casados, who says the agency has had little luck signing up new foster parents.
“From the 124 events that I think we’ve had, we had 19 people that actually engaged with us after those events,” Casados said. Despite low interest, the department’s been working to get kids out of CYFD’s offices in a different way: a new multipurpose home for boys aged 12 and up in Albuquerque.
“It’s a CYFD facility that we have. It used to be the Girl’s Reintegration Center, and we’ve made some upgrades to that location. AMI Kids is operating that for us,” Casados said.
The facility has four bedrooms with three beds to a room, a classroom, and an outdoor recreation area. Staff includes a chef, a nurse, and therapists onsite. Casados says they have partnerships with a charter school and a local community college to do online school and have a tutor onsite. They also have a partnership with Workforce Solutions.
“It’s really about normalcy for those kids and providing them the environment that will prepare them for you know, life. Some of these are older youth. They’re 15, 16, 17 years old,” Casados said.
“We’re still continuing to look for placement, but if they end up going into Fostering Connections or transitional living for youth, we want to make sure they’re prepared and have the skills to be successful,” Casados said.
So far, five kids are living there. The facility has the capacity for 12, and Casados hopes to have the rest of the boys living in the offices transition to the center by month’s end.
However, some advocates aren’t thrilled with the venture, saying the state has other obligations it still needs to meet. Jesse Clifton, an attorney with Disability Rights New Mexico, says CYFD has already settled a lawsuit in 2020 that highlighted the overuse of congregate care.
“The allegations of that lawsuit in general terms alleged that children who have been subject to abuse and neglect and had been brought into the custody of the state of New Mexico were further subjected to more abuse and neglect as opposed to updating the resources and supports they needed to thrive,” Clifton said.
“The lawsuit aimed at total system reform, and the lawsuit was brought in 2018 and it settled in 2020 with the state agreeing that the child welfare system in New Mexico was in need of pretty total reform,” Clifton said, “Those have overwhelmingly been disappointing progress reports as there’s much of the settlement that has yet to be satisfied and many of the deadlines have passed.”
He says prior to the lawsuit, children were inappropriately housed in group care: “Everyone has always agreed, I mean from the time of the settlement agreement to the corrective action plan which was as recent as last year—children belong in family homes. That’s the goal.”
Clifton says the new center doesn’t align with that goal. “That term multi-service home, multipurpose home, is a little bit of a misnomer because for all of its amenities is not a family home. It’s still congregate care and so we just have to keep those realities in mind,” Clifton said, “While this is movement of some kind, it’s not the movement that was agreed to and it’s not again the solution. This is more of a band-aid than a solution.”
Casados says the goal here is ending the office stays: “I think this is the better of those two situations, but our goal really is to make sure we can get those kids into permanent placement in a family-like setting…You know locations like this, you know multiservice homes are not ideal and there will be some people that don’t think this is the best course of action for us to take. We just want to make sure we’re meeting the needs of the kids.”
CYFD is also working to create a similar home for girls in Albuquerque who are currently staying in their offices.
CYFD emphasizes: they are looking for people to become foster parents to help with this issue. “Any help that we can get in encouraging individuals across the state to become foster families or even to give it a try if they want to be a respite family and try that slowly, we’d love to have a conversation with them about that,” Casados said.
For more information on becoming a foster parent, head to CYFD’s website here.
SANTA FE, N.M. – Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham asked Attorney General Raúl Torrez to investigate whether any Drug Enforcement Administration agents broke state law when pills reached New Mexico streets.
In a statement, Lujan Grisham said, “make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities.”
The governor also shared a timeline from 2022 to 2025 that she said shows when she asked federal officials for help with New Mexico’s fentanyl crisis and violent crime.
Lujan Grisham said the first request came on June 21, 2022, when she wrote to then-Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray and asked for 50 additional federal agents.
She said she wrote to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland on Sept. 15, 2022, asking for more agents, resources and support for New Mexico law enforcement.
Lujan Grisham said she wrote Garland a second time on Aug. 8, 2023, with the same request.
What came next?
About a month later, Lujan Grisham said she sent Garland a third letter and said New Mexico needed more federal law enforcement to curb violent crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking.
She said her most recent request came on Sept. 4, 2025, when she wrote to former Attorney General Pam Bondi and again asked for additional agents and resources.
The governor’s statement says those requests span several years as she pressed the federal government for more help in New Mexico.
Full statement from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham:
“I am appalled by reporting this week by the Associated Press and Albuquerque Journal that revealed federal authorities made a deliberate decision to let hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills flood into New Mexico communities, despite knowing that fentanyl is so lethal the White House has designated it a weapon of mass destruction.
Let me say that again: the Drug Enforcement Administration watched as 74,000 fentanyl pills were delivered to a mobile home park in Albuquerque, and they did nothing. And that’s just one transaction. Shockingly, the federal government stood by while monitoring shipments, tallying exact pill counts, and watching as these deadly drugs hit the streets.
There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were. Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway. The result: hundreds of New Mexican parents burying their kids. Hundreds of New Mexican kids growing up without stable parents. All while the federal government stood by.
If the justification for letting these pills flood our communities was that it would somehow make New Mexico safer down the road through bigger eventual busts, the results say otherwise. New Mexico now leads the nation in the increase in overdose deaths for the second straight year, despite deaths dropping nationwide.
Today, I wrote to Attorney General Raúl Torrez and asked him to investigate whether any federal agents broke state law when they allowed lethal drugs to remain on our streets, and to prosecute anyone responsible — regardless of whether they are a federal agent or not.
I have spent years working across two administrations — writing letters, traveling to Washington, meeting directly with President Joe Biden and his cabinet, pushing for accountability, asking for more federal agents to be deployed to New Mexico to help fight this crisis.
- On June 21, 2022, I wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray, imploring the FBI to assign no less than 50 additional agents to New Mexico to stem escalating drug trafficking and violent crime.
- On September 15, 2022, I wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland, requesting that the Department of Justice provide additional federal agents, resources and support to New Mexico law enforcement. We asked the department to match the level of investigative, analytical, and technical resources the FBI had deployed in its Buffalo, NY surge.
- On August 8, 2023, I wrote again to Attorney General Garland, renewing my request that the DOJ expeditiously assign more federal agents to New Mexico.
- On September 7, 2023, I wrote to Attorney General Garland for a third time, reiterating my request once more federal law enforcement support to curb violent crime, drug and human trafficking.
- On September 4, 2025, I wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, once again requesting additional agents and resources.
I have declared the surge of drugs like fentanyl to be a public health emergency. I have deployed the National Guard to both Albuquerque and Española. While my administration was doing everything we could to stem the tide of fentanyl coming into our state, the federal government deliberately allowed it to flood in.
New Mexican lives are not the federal government’s cost of doing business.
I plan to hold the federal government accountable for this disaster and will explore every possible avenue of action against the federal government to right these wrongs.”
The Canyon Venado Fire has grown to 852 acres east of Clines Corners and crews say wind farms in the area are threatened.
CLINES CORNERS, N.M. – The Canyon Venado Fire has grown to 852 acres east of Clines Corners and crews say wind farms in the area are threatened.
The fire is burning just east of Clines Corners, south of Interstate 40.
It forced the closure of eastbound Interstate 40 at Clines Corners on Tuesday night. I-40 reopened Tuesday night. I-40 is back open but smoke still affects visibility.
“We’re on the side of I-40 so drivers have to be pretty cautious. As far as our establishment itself we’re pretty isolated by the freeway itself as a nice fire break,” said Lincoln Tarantino, Clines Corner general manager.
The fire has burned around 852 acres, up from just 20 at this time Monday.
Crews say the fire is not contained and wind farms in the area are threatened.
New Mexico
Feds allowed millions of fentanyl pills to ‘walk’ on New Mexico streets: DEA Whistleblower
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