In 2025, the New Mexico legislature passed a law that required the state’s Children, Youth, and Families Department to create a dashboard on its website. Among other pieces of information that the public should be able to see, according to this new rule, was “the number of children placed in the custody of the department who have run away while in custody.” Since the end of June, that number has been 56. There are 56 children in foster care in New Mexico that the state cannot locate. How did this happen? Who are these kids? And why is the government agency that is supposed to keep them safe failing them so spectacularly?