Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland on Thursday announced her gubernatorial campaign’s plan for public safety issues, which includes overhauling the troubled Children, Youth and Families Department, creating a statewide behavioral health response department and prohibiting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from operating near places of worship, parks and government buildings.
Former state Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, former State Police Chief Pete Kassetas and New Mexico Behavioral Health Providers Association President David Ley all joined Haaland at a news conference outside a shuttered Albuquerque behavioral health clinic to endorse her plan.
Reforming CYFD and boosting the number and quality of behavioral health services across the state will free up police officers to focus on their “traditional police work” and will secure potential youthful offenders the help they need before they commit a crime, they said.
“Too often, individuals in our state don’t receive care until there is a situation that is escalated to an emergency,” Ley said. “Expanding access to early intervention services, treatment programs and recovery resources will help close the gaps that currently exist throughout our behavioral health system.”
Haaland said she hopes to address the “root causes” of crime by meeting kids where they are.
That starts with overhauling CYFD, she said. Her 19-page plan calls for appointing an experienced cabinet secretary, increasing pay and boosting recruitment efforts and mandating data sharing between the Office of the Child Advocate and the New Mexico State Police, Health Care Authority and the Early Childhood Education and Care Department. In a Thursday statement, Haaland’s campaign said the plan represents “a path to overhaul CYFD and replace it with an independent commission.”
“On day one, I will appoint a qualified secretary and direct them to take drastic measures to increase staff, rebuild partnerships, standardize foster recruitment and certification, all with the end goal of creating an independent commission to bring the consistency that our children deserve,” Haaland told reporters before noting that she views these as long-term answers to a longstanding problem. “These are not overnight solutions.”
Problems have plagued CYFD for years. It’s been a revolving door for leadership — when Secretary Teresa Casados abruptly retired in September, she was the fifth secretary in six years. The department is currently run by Acting Secretary Valerie Sandoval. And Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham only recently abolished the practice of letting kids stay in agency office buildings overnight.
In response to a query from Source NM, CYFD Deputy Director of Communications Jessica Preston said the agency had not yet had a chance to review Haaland’s proposal and it would therefore “be premature” to comment on it.
Haaland said that she would also create a statewide Office of Community Safety to send social workers, counselors and behavioral health professionals to the scenes of nonviolent 911 calls, much like Albuquerque Community Safety does.
The Albuquerque Police Department has long reported the highest rate in the nation of police killings. The police force continued to hold that distinction in 2025, according to data published by the nonprofit Mapping Police Violence, despite several years of ACS operations.
Haaland, for her part, said she believes the new state department will serve two critical public safety functions: Give people in crisis the behavioral health resources they need, and free police officers up to work on serious crimes, like drug trafficking.
“Being homeless is not a crime. Being in a mental health crisis — not a crime,” she said. “Those folks need help from people trained to manage those situations. This is a shift that must happen.”
Her plan focuses on public safety systems beyond municipal and state police departments — it includes proposals to fully fund the Law Offices of the Public Defender, to create a task force that will streamline Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons cases and support the work of the state’s newly formed Jeffrey Epstein “truth commission.”
Haaland also pledged to ban ICE agents from wearing face masks while on the job and to prohibit them from operating within 500 yards of schools and child care facilities, state courthouses and government buildings, religious institutions, health clinics, public parks and “significant cultural sites.”
There have been efforts to that effect at the federal level, as well. U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Lujàn (D-N.M.) on Wednesday introduced bills that he said would require ICE to disclose more information about its arrests and deportations. Another of his proposals would evaluate whether ICE agents hired during a recent recruitment blitz were properly trained.
Elected leaders in Denver recently approved a ban on law enforcement officials, including ICE agents, wearing masks.
Haaland said she would end cooperation agreements with ICE and sign a law to prohibit National Guard troops in other states from deploying to New Mexico.
“When I’m governor, no one will be above the law,” she said.
- 5:41 pmThis story was updated following publication to reflect CYFD's response to Source NM's request for comment.
