'Native children belong in Native communities': tribes decry New Mexico drug-exposed newborn rule [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Sun 21 Jun 2026 11.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 21 Jun 2026 11.01 EDT
One morning early last July, Micha Bitsinnie arrived at work to an onslaught of messages from confused families. New Mexico’s governor Michelle Lujan Grisham had just issued a directive mandating the state’s child welfare department seek custody of all newborns who had been exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero. Some parents wondered whether medications that they were taking for addiction recovery, such as methadone, would flag their cases. Healthcare providers wondered whether the fentanyl in an epidural counted as a drug exposure.
Bitsinnie supports families as a policy manager at the non-profit organization Bold Futures, which advocates for policies that keep families together. Research shows that children prenatally exposed to substances do best when they can remain in their families and receive supportive services to treat any withdrawal symptoms they experience.
Bitsinnie is also a member of the Navajo nation, and she immediately noticed that the new directive appeared to be in tension with laws protecting the sovereignty of New Mexico’s Native tribes. Those laws stipulate that tribes must be immediately notified about a child welfare case involving a Native child so that they can take jurisdiction of cases involving their citizens. “How are we notifying families, tribes, nations, pueblos?” she wondered
“The directive erodes important procedural safeguards for Indian families,” the ACLU wrote in an emergency petition it filed with New Mexico’s supreme court last month, noting that it “makes no reference to specific procedures and safeguards for Indian children and families established in state and federal law”. Nine tribes signed on to the lawsuit. Although the state supreme court declined to pause the governor’s mandate in early June, it will allow arguments on the case to proceed.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/21/new-mexico-policies-families
Link to ACLU PRESS RELEASE - ACLU, Joined by State Legislators, Asks NM Supreme Court to Halt CYFD Directive Separating Newborns from Their Families
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