New Mexico CYFD dismissed foster teen's case mid-hearing and directed him to walk alone across the Mexico border

On July 6, 2026, New Mexico's Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) obtained dismissal of a 15-year-old foster child's custody case in the middle of a court hearing, then gave the boy five minutes to pack and drove him from his New Mexico foster home to the border crossing in El Paso, Texas, directing him to walk alone into Ciudad Juárez to reunite with his mother, who had recently been deported after a drug-related arrest. The boy, a U.S. citizen who had lived with the mother's family friends for nine years and had repeatedly and explicitly said he did not want to live with her, was released onto the bridge alone; CYFD had already lost phone contact with the mother before he crossed. He crossed several lanes of traffic and walked back into the United States into Border Patrol custody rather than continue into Mexico.

According to New Mexico's Office of the Child Advocate, an independent watchdog created in 2025 to oversee CYFD, and to a subsequent lawsuit by Attorney General Raúl Torrez, CYFD then asked federal authorities to bar the boy's re-entry to the United States. Border Patrol told CYFD it could not force a U.S. citizen back across the border, and agents instead took him to a Texas shelter, where he stayed for more than ten days while CYFD said the case was "closed" to the agency and declined to retrieve him. On July 17, CYFD coordinated with the Mexican consulate, Texas child-welfare officials and Border Patrol to complete the crossing; the agency confirmed the boy was living with his mother in Mexico by July 20.

The Office of the Child Advocate found probable violations of the boy's constitutional rights and "reckless disregard" for his health and safety, and referred the case to the Attorney General. Torrez told reporters CYFD "short-circuited any opportunity for a district court, a children's court judge, to evaluate" the boy's wishes, denying him the hearing and attorney New Mexico law affords children 14 and older in custody proceedings. CYFD maintained it had no legal grounds to keep the boy in foster care once his informal guardians withdrew and said it had assessed his mother, by phone and video, as safe.

Updates

2026-07-28 — AG Torrez sued CYFD over teen's border expulsion [4][5]

On July 28, 2026, Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued CYFD in New Mexico's First Judicial District Court, seeking a court order for the boy's safe return to New Mexico and a bar on CYFD removing children from the country without court approval. The suit followed an April 2026 New Mexico Department of Justice investigative report that found CYFD had prioritized family reunification over child safety; CYFD disputed that finding at the time.