Illustration by Franco Zacha for Searchlight New Mexico
Just before lunchtime on Oct. 24 of this year, an employee of the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department heard what sounded like an argument between two teenage boys coming from inside a room in the agency’s Albuquerque office building, where the boys had been living. As the argument appeared to escalate into a fight, the employee called for a private security guard to intervene.
According to a police report and interviews with eyewitnesses, the guard walked into the room and picked one of the boys up, his feet dangling off the floor, and then threw him across the room. While the guard held the other boy on the ground, the first boy tried to grab his legs; the guard picked up that boy and threw him once, then twice, then at least one more time, at one point hitting the boy’s head against a metal door frame.
Descriptions of the altercation vary — in interviews with state police, the guard, an employee of a global firm called Securitas, said he was “only using limited force,” and that one of the boys had punched him and tried to grab his duty belt. One CYFD employee told police the response was appropriate, while another employee who was there said that the way the guard handled the situation was “rough” — a description that matches two others given to Searchlight by witnesses, one of whom said the guard “beat the shit out of” one of the boys.
After the dust settled, CYFD took both boys to Presbyterian Hospital to be assessed. The hospital released them back to CYFD.
Securitas, the company contracted to provide security at the CYFD office, did not reply to requests for comment. In an emailed statement, a CYFD spokesperson said that the department “has contracted with Securitas to ensure the safety of the children, families, foster families and staff at CYFD offices at anytime. They are able to respond in any circumstances 24/7.” The guards stationed at the office have the highest level of training and certification, the statement said.
CYFD did not answer written questions from Searchlight, including a question about what, if any, disciplinary actions were taken following the incident.
These events are among several recent incidents in which foster youth have been verbally threatened and forcibly handled by private security guards while staying in CYFD’s Albuquerque office building, a Searchlight investigation found.
The youth involved in these altercations — teenagers, many of whom have spent most of their lives in the foster care system and have experienced repeated mental health crises — are among the most traumatized children in CYFD custody. They have not been accused of crimes, but are nonetheless guarded by armed private security while living in the agency’s office.
They are not supposed to be staying in offices at all.
Dangerous placements
Nearly five years ago, the state signed a landmark settlement agreement in response to a lawsuit filed by 14 kids in foster care. The suit, named after its lead plaintiff, Kevin S., claimed that the state’s failure to find appropriate foster placements and provide mental health care to kids was “locking New Mexico’s foster children into a vicious cycle of declining physical, mental and behavioral health.”
The state agreed to wide-ranging reforms in 2020, which included putting an end to inappropriate placements in offices and other so-called congregate care settings. It also committed to building “a statewide, community-based behavioral health system that all children and families will be able to access.”
CYFD has made efforts to meet the terms of the agreement, including successfully increasing the number of foster youth placed with relatives. But it is still massively behind on its commitments, according to a 2024 report released by independent monitors appointed to oversee the promised reforms. Among the department’s outlined failures: far from ending office placements, CYFD oversaw 322 such placements last year — a “sharp and alarming jump,” monitors wrote, that was more than double the number of such placements the previous year. And while the agency has made small improvements in providing mental health care to foster children, those steps fall far short of what is needed and what was expected, the monitors found.
As youth continue sleeping in offices, dangerous situations have occurred at a concerning rate. In October alone — the month in which the two boys were repeatedly thrown by a security guard — police responded to at least six 911 calls, for incidents including a fight, aggravated assault, a missing person report, and an abduction or hostage situation, according to police dispatch records. In one incident on Oct. 1, a security guard shot a man who had been sleeping on the property after the man attacked the guard with bear spray, according to news reports.
And on multiple occasions, staff have found drugs — including fentanyl — inside the areas of the office where the children were staying, according to interviews with foster youth, attorneys and a CYFD employee with direct knowledge.
‘I can’t breathe’
The problem is longstanding. A 2023 investigation by Searchlight and ProPublica found that CYFD was shuffling high-needs kids between agency office buildings and youth homeless shelters, where they did not receive the mental or behavioral health care they needed. As a result, some kids experienced one mental health crisis after another — crises that were often handled by police, sometimes leading to dangerous altercations between officers and kids.
When those same kids lose control or become aggressive while staying in CYFD’s office, their outbursts are often handled by armed security guards. Foster youth interviewed for this story said that these interactions usually don’t escalate to physical altercations between guards and children. But in some cases, the incidents have left youth with substantial injuries.
In Nov. 2024, a teenage girl named Jacie was living at the office — one of more than 25 foster placements she’s had since being taken into CYFD custody as a five-year-old, according to her attorney. In an interview with Searchlight, Jacie said a security guard approached her as she was having a loud conversation on her cell phone in front of the main entrance of CYFD’s Albuquerque office.
“He yelled in my face,” Jacie recalled. “And I’m a moody teenager, so I yelled back in his face.” The guard then put her in a “restraint hold,” she said, holding her hands behind her back as he tried to take her to the ground. “I gave up resisting and he pinned me to the ground with his knee in the middle of my back. I was like, ‘I can’t breathe, get off of me!’” The incident left her shaken — and with deep bruises on her legs, arms and torso.
Jacie added that “it’s kind of expected” that youth will have run-ins with guards at the office, saying that such altercations are so routine that kids often don’t even notice them.
After being restrained by the guard, Jacie photographed her injuries and shared them with her attorney. Jacie asked that her name and the photos of her injuries be reported in this story.
“I feel like not only my voice needs to be heard, but all the other kids need to be heard that nobody is listening to,” she said. “I’m speaking up for everybody at the office who’s too scared to speak up.”
Jacie’s attorney, Darlene Gomez, confirmed Jacie’s account in a phone interview. Gomez said she subsequently complained to CYFD, and the department reported the incident to its Statewide Central Intake database, a system that catalogs incidents of abuse.
“This is assault,” Gomez told Searchlight. “If CYFD had visited a child’s home and seen bruises like this, they would have called the police and pressed charges against the parents, and taken the kid into foster care.”
‘We didn’t ask to be in foster care’
Another incident occurred in 2023, according to court filings shared with Searchlight. This one involved a teenage girl named Alyssa who had been moved between more than 30 foster placements, including a 33-day stay at CYFD’s Albuquerque office. Alyssa, now 17, asked that she be identified in this story by her first name.
During her time in the office, Alyssa slept on a mattress on the floor, was served only reheated frozen food that was prepared at the county juvenile detention center, and was provided no mental health treatment, the filings say, despite a court order that she receive this kind of help.
According to court records and interviews, following a loud argument with Alyssa’s foster care case worker on Sept. 17, a security guard approached her and said: “What you need is a good old-fashioned ass whooping.” Understandably, Alyssa took this statement as a threat.
Alyssa’s Albuquerque-based attorney, Sara Crecca, reported the incident to CYFD. In an interview, Alyssa said the guard was allowed to return to work at the office after that incident. On another occasion, Alyssa said, a female security guard physically shoved her while Alyssa was having an argument with her social worker.
“When children are removed from their families they suffer a tremendous trauma,” Crecca said in an email to Searchlight. “To then spend even a single night sleeping in a CYFD office, let alone weeks on end, is unforgivable and a clear violation of state and federal law. It is impossible to overestimate how damaging this is to a child’s mental and physical health, and ability to focus and learn in school.”
The constant presence of armed security in the office was often stressful, Alyssa explained. “They’re just walking down the hallways” in the office. “It kind of makes me feel uncomfortable, because it’s like, that’s where we stay and we sleep, right? It’s not the kids’ fault” that they’re in this situation, she said. “We didn’t ask to be in foster care.”
‘Extremely predictable’ confrontations
While foster youths’ outbursts can sometimes become dangerous in CYFD offices, relying on police or armed guards to intervene in crises can also exacerbate children’s trauma and make the dynamics more volatile, said Dr. George Davis, CYFD’s former chief psychiatrist and a leader in reform efforts centered on the department’s treatment of foster kids.
“There’s this myth that children respond to power and authority with fear, and it just doesn’t work,” Davis said. Outbursts, even violent ones, are “extremely predictable,” he said, and aggressive physical responses to a child’s behavior are widely understood to only make the problem worse.
“Any response to a kid’s concerning behavior that causes them to be hospitalized tells us there was something the matter with that response,” said Dr. Ross Greene, a clinical psychologist and author who specializes in children with behavioral challenges. “Having armed guards around children wouldn’t be considered a therapeutic intervention. It certainly seems to be sending a message to kids that we have every anticipation that they are going to be out of control at some point.”
Greene, author of bestselling books that include The Explosive Child and Raising Human Beings, argues that behavioral problems in children and youth are the result of failures to provide the children adequate services or supports at an early age, before aggressive behavior manifests.
Children like those in the CYFD office “are not destined to be out of control,” Greene said. “Out of control doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Out of control happens in response to very specific events. Most of the time, it’s a reaction to expectations that they are having difficulty meeting, or care that they should be receiving but aren’t.”
In the past, CYFD employees have agreed on the record that young people placed in the department’s offices are not getting the care they need. In interviews with the monitors appointed to oversee the state’s progress in the Kevin S. settlement, employees explained that “children’s behaviors when housed in the offices are negatively impacted by the conditions they are experiencing and the inattention to their needs.” Staff in the office are not properly trained to provide support or care needed by children living in the building, the employees told the monitors. As a result, “their trauma and feelings of abandonment multiply.”
“It’s dangerous for everyone in there,” a CYFD employee who has worked in the office told Searchlight. The employee asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media. “It’s dangerous for the kids. It’s dangerous for the staff. I’ve been assaulted like five times in the office” by kids placed there, the employee said. “Something has to change.”