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.
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