Illustration by Diana Branzan/Searchlight New Mexico
On May 16, 17-year-old Makamy Sage Anderson took her own life at a home assigned to her by the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department. Makamy, who was pregnant at the time of her death, is one of four youths to die under CYFD’s watch since April.
Details about Makamy’s life are scarce at this stage. Foster and adoptive parents, counselors and relatives who knew her did not respond to requests to speak to a reporter for this story.
Case files obtained by Searchlight show that Makamy was struggling in the weeks before her death. She was upset about having to leave her home community in southeastern New Mexico for foster placements, and was specifically unhappy about being sent to stay in CYFD office buildings, where the department often sends children to sleep when case workers can’t find a suitable foster home. In late April, she was taken from a CYFD office to Springer, a five-and-a-half-hour drive from her hometown of Hobbs. She died there three weeks later. A memorial service was held for Makamy in Hobbs in early June. She leaves behind a boyfriend and at least one sibling.
“She was a couch surfer, she bounced from house to house,” said Randy Pettigrew, a Republican state representative from Lea County who has had access to CYFD documentation on Makany’s case. “She had a multitude of office stays. She was listed as a runaway multiple times” while dealing with significant mental health challenges, he said. At least one of the foster homes she was assigned to was not properly licensed by CYFD, Pettigrew said.
Makamy’s case worker had asked for help finding mental health providers in the area, according to the documents obtained by Searchlight. The documents do not say whether she received those services.
Before taking her life, she wrote “Do not save me” on her arm, the documents say.
CYFD declined to comment on Makany’s death, saying in an email that because the case “is still under active investigation, it would be premature for CYFD to respond at this time.”
The tragedy comes as CYFD faces scathing criticism from state legislators, who say the agency has failed to protect New Mexico’s most vulnerable children. In the most recent session, lawmakers passed several significant bills aimed at increasing oversight and transparency at the agency.
Much of the criticism centers on the agency’s lack of progress in fulfilling promises it made under the 2020 settlement of the Kevin S. lawsuit, a class action suit which claimed the state’s child welfare system was “locking New Mexico’s foster children into a vicious cycle of declining physical, mental and behavioral health.”
As part of that settlement, CYFD agreed to stop housing its foster youth in group settings and to provide them with adequate mental health care. But the department has failed year after year to meet its commitments to those promises, according to independent monitors — failures that were highlighted yet again in an arbitration hearing last week.
Instead, CYFD has continued to house children with serious mental and behavioral health needs in youth homeless shelters and its office buildings, where they have been sexually assaulted, injured by armed guards and exposed to fentanyl and other drugs.
Those placements have been particularly harmful for teenagers like Makamy. A 2022 investigation by Searchlight and ProPublica found that many teens in foster care — a group that CYFD has an especially hard time placing in stable homes — spend their teenage years shuffling between shelters and offices without receiving adequate mental health services. These teenagers experience drastic declines in their mental health amid such instability, often culminating in violent outbursts, suicide attempts and other crises.
In two episodes now, which happened barely a month apart, teenagers who had been repeatedly shuffled through offices and shelters have died by suicide. In April, Jaydun Garcia, a 16-year-old who was beloved by his peers in foster care, took his life at a makeshift home in Albuquerque for youth who lack foster placements. Two other children involved with CYFD, both of them infants, have died since June.
“I’m profoundly sad, we should all be profoundly sad, that we’ve seen two children in state custody take their own lives because they felt so hopeless and so alone,” said Maralyn Beck, executive director of New Mexico Child First Network, a foster care advocacy organization. “I don’t think there’s any problem facing New Mexico that’s more serious, with life-altering consequences, than the crisis that is our child protective services.”
Garcia’s death prompted intense outcry among advocates, attorneys and legislators — as well as an investigation by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez. A spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Justice, the agency overseen by Torrez, said that investigators are currently examining Makany Anderson’s death as well.“We are aware of the recent tragic incident involving a young individual in Springer, New Mexico,” Lauren Rodriguez, chief of staff at the department, said in an email to Searchlight. “Our office is actively reviewing the circumstances surrounding this case. We urge anyone with information about the individual’s history or events leading up to their death to contact the New Mexico Department of Justice.”
This post was originally authored and published by Ed Williams, Searchlight New Mexico from via RSS Feed. to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
