Without ever intending it, New Mexico’s governor has made it more likely that vulnerable children will die – and used an Orwellian justification

A wealth of research suggests Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s
child-confiscation-at-birth directive will lead to more child deaths.
But she justifies the directive by saying, in effect, well,  they haven’t died yet.
A directive likely to cost lives is justified with a claim that it saves lives.
Orwell would understand.

This week, without explanation, New Mexico’s Supreme Court upheld Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s child-confiscation-at-birth directive. Under this directive, issued nearly a year ago, any child “born exposed to methamphetamines, fentanyl, polysubstance, or diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome” is taken away on-the-spot. 

Since Grisham issued her decree, more than 200 children have been confiscated, torn from their mothers during the most important hours of their lives, their first. Since then, says the governor, in a comment quoted in some form over and over: none has died. That claim has become a mantra, echoed by the take-the-child-and-run fan club among state journalists, which, sadly, seems to encompass a lot of major news organizations.

But Grisham’s claim is, at best, incomplete, and at worst, grossly misleading. 

What the governor should have said is None has died – yet. 

Because the evidence is overwhelming that, for all sorts of reasons, some of those children the governor and her allies claim to have saved will die prematurely. Others will suffer other grievous harm. It will happen because they were taken needlessly. But it will happen in ways that insulate Grisham, and the advocates and journalists who support the confiscation-at-birth policy from any accountability.  Was that the governor’s intent? Of course not. But it’s the likely result. 

Here are some of the things research tells us that the governor either doesn’t know or chose to ignore: 

● Some children will die because of the intrinsic toxicity of removal itself. I’m not even talking about the high rate of physical and sexual abuse in foster care; I’m talking about inherent trauma; the kind of trauma documented by that study I keep citing from Sweden – the one showing that, in typical cases, children placed in foster care were more than four times more likely to die by age 20 than even comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. The most common cause of death was suicide. The numbers aren’t small. Among children left in their own homes, 1.8% died before age 20. Among the foster children, it was 8.6%. 

This study is just one of so many showing so many horrible outcomes for foster youth – again, when compared to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes, that it’s now possible to calculate how many more children will suffer all sorts of grievous harm, including premature death, because of things like Grisham’s confiscation at birth policy and similar actions that encourage needless placement. 

I think this kind of intrinsic toxicity of placement is what New Yorker writer Larissa MacFarquhar was getting at in what amounts to a message to her fellow journalists, a message many reporters in New Mexico seem determined to ignore.

● And there are other terrible consequences for children. As we pointed out in our rebuttal to a report from an even more clueless New Mexico politician, a clue to those consequences can be found in a study conducted during a previous “worst drug plague ever,” crack cocaine:

Researchers studied two groups of children born with cocaine in their systems; one group was placed in foster care, another left with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Typically, the children left with their birth mothers did better.  For the foster children, the separation from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine. 

Similarly, consider what The New York Times found when it looked at the best way to treat infants born with opioids in their systems. According to the Times: 

[A] growing body of evidence suggests that what these babies need is what has been taken away: a mother.  Separating newborns in withdrawal can slow the infants’ recovery, studies show, and undermine an already fragile parenting relationship. When mothers are close at hand, infants in withdrawal require less medication and fewer costly days in intensive care. 

“Mom is a powerful treatment,” said Dr. Matthew Grossman, a pediatric hospitalist at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital who has studied the care of opioid-dependent babies. 

● On top of that, as the ACLU and two courageous legislators, State Sen. Linda López and Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena, pointed out when they sought to stop this anti-child policy, that policy poses direct threats to children’s lives and health: 

The directive causes the very harm it purports to prevent. Stigma and criminalization drive families away from care — parents may avoid prenatal appointments, travel out of state to give birth, or conceal their health history from providers, leaving both mother and child worse off. 

As the drug policy experts at the Reason Foundation put it in a critique of the confiscation-at-birth policy 

Decades of public health evidence show New Mexico’s new mandate is a superficial fix that undermines effective, long-term solutions. 

As the ACLU also notes, the point is not that no child ever should be taken under these circumstances. Odds are there are some among those 200 children for whom removal, while extremely harmful, still was less harmful than leaving them in their homes. But, as the ACLU explains, 

A decision to remove a newborn from their mother should not be determined by a blanket policy. Instead, it should be made through an individualized assessment of the particular circumstances of each child. The right to due process of law requires that every family be treated as an individual family unit –– not treated as a category. New Mexico children deserve the chance to grow up with the people who love them and for decisions made about their wellbeing to be grounded in law, medicine, and their actual circumstances.” 

But while the directive is enormously dangerous for children, it’s perfect for politicians and their enablers. Because, assuming the governor is correct, none of the children has died yet. 

By the time that happens, it may be years from now. By then, the child might be in her or his third foster home, or maybe institutionalized, or trapped in some awful makeshift placement and driven to suicide – as, of course, happened in New Mexico, twice in 2025 alone. 

By then, Grisham will be long out of office. The journalists will have collected their little awards and moved on, after proudly pointing to Grisham’s policy on the part of the award entry form that says, “What did the stories accomplish?” So when that child needlessly confiscated at birth suffers lifelong debilitating illness, or injury – or dies prematurely – no one will hold any of them accountable. 

Meanwhile, a policy that makes it more likely that more children will die is justified on grounds that none has died yet. George Orwell would have understood.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending June 9, 2026

● In a case involving what is alleged to be rampant lying by both foster parents and a family police agency supervisor in Alaska, a judge sanctioned the entire agency for needlessly tearing a newborn from her mother, who was herself a foster child. According to the Anchorage Daily News:

In a scathing 23-page order, the judge said the in-court testimony of an unnamed [child welfare agency] supervisor was “anything but truthful to this Court and either attempted to deceive or trick this Court and the parties,” suggesting the person may have lied under oath. 

● Gothamist reports on some of the nine – yes nine – separate lawsuits, including a major class-action, challenging how the New York City family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, routinely abuses its power to remove children in so-called emergencies without so much as asking a judge first. From the story: 

Melissa Friedman, an attorney in charge at the Legal Aid Society who represents children in family court, said emergency removals often traumatize the children she and her colleagues represent. Younger children may experience more bedwetting, nightmares, tantrums and self harm, she said, while older kids often act out. At least one child compared the experience to being kidnapped, she said. 

As for why there are so many such suits in New York City: It’s not because the city’s family police agency is worse than others across the country, it's because the city’s network of legal representation for children and families is better. 

● Nebraska has long torn apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation. Compounding the problem, KETV reports, the state is vastly increasing the number of those children it institutionalizes. 

● The Colorado Sun reports that Colorado’s child abuse hotline accepts for investigation 26% of calls – unless the call involves abuse in a residential treatment center. Then, over the past five years, only 8% were accepted for investigation. 

Some better news in two other states, where some good legislation is progressing: 

● In Illinois, WGLT Public Radio reports: 

Illinois lawmakers unanimously passed a bill during the spring legislative session that gives more transparency and tools to parents to defend themselves in child abuse cases. 

The bill requires child abuse pediatricians — investigators at the hospital who look at medical records to determine if there is potential child abuse — to state who they are to parents as they start an investigation. It also allows parents to get a second opinion and use that during court hearings. 

● And in Pennsylvania, CapitolWire reports 

The House Children and Youth Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved two bipartisan measures designed to reform child welfare and strengthen protections for parental rights. … 

House Bill 133 allows Pennsylvania courts to restore parental rights in certain cases when a parent has successfully rehabilitated and a child has not been adopted, giving families a second chance. … 

House Bill 138 also protects the rights of incarcerated parents by ensuring incarceration alone cannot be used to terminate parental rights. It requires courts to consider a parent’s efforts to stay involved in their child’s life while incarcerated. 

● Writing for the Center for New York City Affairs, Angela Burton and Joyce McMillan note that 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani's create[ed]… the Office of Community Safety – based on the idea that early interventions can increase safety before policing becomes the only available strategy. 

They call for doing the same to curb family policing by creating an Office of Family Well-Being. 

● And in Kentucky, a judge has ordered the arrest of former Gov. Matt Bevin for allegedly failing to produce documents the court demanded in connection with a child support case pursued by the son he adopted from Ethiopia. But, as WKYT reports, that’s only the latest twist in a story of an adoption gone horribly wrong. There’s more about the case here and here.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending June 2, 2026

● A lawsuit challenging the New York City family police agency’s misuse of its power to tear apart families without even going through the pro-forma process of asking a judge first was the subject of stories in The Imprint, the New York Daily News, and some extraordinary journalism in The New Yorker. I have a blog post with links to all of those stories, with particular attention to what The New Yorker published. I want to highlight just one part of that story here: 

In the lawsuits against A.C.S., a legal victory may actually be less important than changing public perception, because the law as written isn’t the main problem: the problem is that A.C.S. isn’t following it. A.C.S. isn’t following it because public pressure is pushing it in only one direction. Insofar as most people know anything at all about child-protective services, they know that its caseworkers are people who rescue children from danger. They hear about A.C.S. only when this mission fails and a child ends up dead. Therefore, A.C.S. follows the mantra of “better safe than sorry,” where “safe” often means preventing the kind of harm to a child that A.C.S. might be blamed for, while discounting the harm of separating children from their families. An unpublished report in 2020 found that some A.C.S. staff “described an internal culture that operates on fear and intimidation. . . . This frequently means that staff err on the side of safety for themselves, by seeking removal.” 

This means sending into foster care thousands of children who would be better off with their parents. …  The litigators hope that the seizure lawsuit will bring public attention to unwarranted A.C.S. removals, because, if sufficient outrage can be generated, then “safe”—both for children and for A.C.S. staff—can be redefined. 

● Some of the same groups that brought the lawsuit about emergency removals won a victory in an earlier suit involving that kind of separation. As The Imprint reports: 

A federal appeals court has revived a closely watched lawsuit brought by a Bronx father who alleges that New York City’s child welfare agency violated his family’s constitutional rights by taking custody of his infant son without a court order and without adequate justification. The two were separated for nearly three years even though the father was accused of no wrongdoing. 

● Last week, I highlighted a story from Abortion, Every Day that begins this way: 

Child Protective Services (CPS) has targeted mothers in multiple states who helped their daughters seek out abortions. In one case, CPS removed a teen from her home—and threatened her mother with murder charges—to stop her from getting an abortion. 

After forcing that girl to give birth, “CPS opened up an investigation into the teen for being a young mother.” 

On MS Now, Ali Velshi recaps the story and discusses the implications with Prof. Dorothy Roberts, author of Shattered Bonds, and Torn Apart (and a member of NCCPR’s Board). Media Matters for America published this video excerpt and has a transcript of Prof. Roberts’ interview. 

          

● The Associated Press has the latest in a long line of superb exposés of the “troubled teen” industry - this time focusing on a subset of “residential treatment centers” that specialize in institutionalizing adopted children. In addition to exposing allegations of widespread, horrific abuse, the AP story examined the business strategy of Embark Behavioral Health, the for-profit firm that runs many such institutions. From the story: 

“DOING EPIC SH$T” was printed on the cover of the August 2020 “Embark Academy Sales & Marketing Conference” handbook. It featured a session on how to “overcome objections” with sales tactics to “build your client base and keep your pipelines full!” 

Attendees were urged to touch hearts to help “assure a doubting child or resentful spouse.” In a session that touted admissions as a vital part of the treatment team, the handbook noted: “The admissions person sells hope when the family is at their lowest and most hopeless, scary, and vulnerable time.” 

A sidebar looks more closely into how the industry exploits loopholes and lax supervision by governments, who appear just fine with having the children out-of-sight and out-of-mind. 

(One footnote: The story also inadvertently exposes something else: The idiocy of management at the AP. Because in the very last line, Sally Ho, one of the authors of this story, and so many other great stories, including exposing the harm of Pittsburgh’s predictive analytics child welfare algorithm, is listed as "a former Associated Press reporter.")