OPINION: It's wrong to assume removing children from homes is always in their best interest

When the federal government finally released long-awaited data this month concerning how many children every state put into foster care in 2023, New Mexico had a distinction as ugly as it was predictable. While most states showed modest declines in the number of children they tore from their homes and a few showed modest increases, New Mexico was the extreme outlier.

New Mexico tore 40% more children from their families in 2023 than in 2022. That’s a full-blown foster-care panic, a sharp surge in removals of children that sometimes follows high-profile child abuse tragedies. The state’s own data suggest that by early this year the panic had eased but was far from over: In the year ending March 2025, the Children Youth and Families Department still took away 20% more children than in 2022.

Of course, some would consider that cause for celebration, wrongly assuming it must mean children are safer. But are they? Have children known-to-the-system stopped dying? Are children no longer beaten or tortured? On the contrary, we hear story after story about the same sort of horrors that set off the panic in the first place — even as far more children face the enormous inherent trauma of removal and the high risk of abuse in foster care itself.

No wonder. When you suddenly flood the system with children, many of whom never needed to be taken, you create an artificial “shortage” of placements. So children wind up living in shelters and offices. And when workers are dealing with so many more cases, they have less time to investigate any case carefully, so more children in real danger are overlooked. A foster-care panic makes all children less safe.

Who are these children? In 78% of cases where New Mexico children were forced into foster care in 2023 there was not even an allegation of sexual abuse or any form of physical abuse. And though some seem to want New Mexicans to believe every child was taken from a hopeless addict, in 58% of cases there was not even an allegation of drug abuse — not just no allegation of horrors, no allegation of any drug abuse of any kind.

The overwhelming majority of children are taken because of “neglect” — which often simply means the family is poor. In 27% of cases, CYFD admits children were taken because their families lacked adequate housing. In other words, CYFD took away more children because of housing than it took because of physical and sexual abuse combined.

How have the state’s politicians responded? With endless attempts to rearrange the deck chairs on the child welfare Titanic. Meanwhile the attorney general hypes a so-called investigation in which he invites current and former caseworkers, foster families, and youth affected by the system to come forward – as he should. But he extends no such invitation to families from whom all these children have been taken. That suggests he’s already drawn his conclusions and they will involve trying to kick the foster-care panic into high gear.

There was a time when this kind of dismal response was the norm across the country. But other states have wised-up. Hype and hysteria set off a foster-care panic in Minnesota in 2014. It made everything worse. So when some tried it again last year, the Legislature wasn’t fooled. Instead they passed legislation to make it harder to confuse poverty with neglect. Other states have enacted similar measures.

New Mexico should follow that example. Because real solutions require a laser focus on the simple fact that wrongful removal is the problem that drives everything else.