Covid-19

A Hospital Was Accused of Racially Profiling Native American Women. Staff Said Administrators Hid the Evidence.

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This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. New Mexico In Depth is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories as soon as they’re published. And sign up to receive New Mexico In Depth stories here. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Federal regulators are ramping up scrutiny of a prominent women’s hospital here after clinicians’ allegations that Native Americans had been racially profiled for extra COVID-19 screening, leading to the temporary separation of some mothers from their newborns. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will refer findings from state investigators about a violation of patient rights at Lovelace Women’s Hospital to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, state officials said. The state Department of Health declined to specify details of the violations it had found.

Children and Education

Is push for education equity at risk amid COVID-19 economic fallout?

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Jasmine Yepa was happy with her daughters’ education at San Diego Riverside Charter School and Walatowa Headstart in Jemez Pueblo.Certified education assistants speak Towa, the Pueblo’s traditional language, with students while teachers build lesson plans in English. The education assistants also translate English lesson plans into Towa, giving children additional opportunities to hear and speak the language in a classroom setting.  

Through her work at the Native American Budget and Policy Institute, Yepa understands the importance of her daughters learning their culture and language to dilute what she calls a “white washed system” that assimilates non-white students into American culture. “Celebrating multiculturalism and multilingualism should help foster appreciation of diversity and foster respect for people’s differences,” she said. “It’s something that all policy makers should understand. Language and culture plays a huge role in not only maintaining our cultural way of life but also our core values.”

Then COVID-19 struck.

Covid-19

State investigating hospital with coronavirus policy that profiled pregnant Native American mothers and separated them from newborns

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This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. New Mexico In Depth is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories as soon as they’re published. And sign up to receive New Mexico In Depth stories here. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced on Twitter Saturday that state officials would investigate allegations of racial profiling of pregnant Native American women at a top hospital in Albuquerque. 

Lujan Grisham was reacting to a story published Saturday by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica revealing that Lovelace Women’s Hospital had a secret policy for screening Native American women for coronavirus based on their appearance and home ZIP code, according to several clinicians who work there. 

Described as racial profiling by medical ethicists, the policy resulted in some Native American women being separated from their newborns at birth as hospital staff waited for test results, according to the clinicians. “These are significant, awful allegations and, if true, a disgusting and unforgivable violation of patient rights,” Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, wrote. “The state of New Mexico is investigating whether this constitutes a CMS violation and will unequivocally hold this hospital accountable.”

CMS, or the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, regulates hospitals to ensure that all patients have access to medical care.

Covid-19

Albuquerque Hospital’s Secret Policy Separated Native American Newborns From Their Mothers

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This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. New Mexico In Depth is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories as soon as they’re published. And sign up to receive New Mexico In Depth stories here. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A prominent women’s hospital here has separated some Native American women from their newly born babies, the result of a practice designed to stop the spread of COVID-19 that clinicians and health care ethicists described as racial profiling.

Covid-19

As Lujan Grisham pledges to tackle racial justice, she’s slow to release NM prisoners amid new virus outbreak

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Hundreds of nonviolent New Mexico prison inmates, including people convicted of drug possession, remained behind bars last week, even as COVID-19 killed its first state prisoner and infected one in three inmates at the Otero County Prison Facility near the southern border. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has won national praise for how she’s led New Mexico through the pandemic, is facing questions over why she hasn’t moved more aggressively to ensure more of the state’s 11 prisons don’t become viral hotspots. 

Since March, her administration has freed about 50 inmates — less than 1% of the state’s prison population — through an April 6 order that requires her to commute sentences rather than using a law already on the books that would allow hundreds of prisoners to be released early. 

The minimal prisoner releases pale next to what some states have done to ease crowding in — and the 30% reduction New Mexico counties have accomplished in the state’s 27 jails. Lujan Grisham’s approach has given some pause, especially given the first-term Democrat’s advocacy for legalizing recreational cannabis and her recent creation of a Council for Racial Justice in response to protests that spilled into New Mexico streets over the killing by police of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis.   

About one quarter of those locked up in New Mexico’s prisons are in for nonviolent drug offenses, including many, some long-time criminal justice watchers say, who were prosecuted for possessing marijuana — an offense that would be legal if New Mexico green-lighted recreational cannabis as Lujan Grisham has lobbied. Hispanic and black people are disproportionately incarcerated in New Mexico, as they are nationwide. 

State Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, believed the pandemic represented a “golden opportunity” for the Lujan Grisham administration to try a different approach besides prison, but he’s “very disappointed,” he said. 

“They basically haven’t dented the prison population, and now there is an outbreak which anyone could have predicted,” Ortiz y Pino said. “I have been concerned about why we have these kinds of low-level drug offenders locked up for a long time, and I am even more concerned now.”

Mark Donatelli, a longtime criminal defense and civil rights lawyer based in Santa Fe, wants to know why the governor hasn’t released prisoners using the Community Corrections Act.

Covid-19

Economic downturn could add to state’s burden of methane

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The naked eye can’t tell you much about methane. Sometimes, distortion wavers above an open pipe or tank at an oil and gas well like the haze of heat over a desert highway. When Earthworks’ Sharon Wilson aims her FLIR camera, however, the screen renders the scene in black and white and plumes of black smoke can be seen wafting skyward. 

“There are so many pipes and vents and tubes, it’s a lot of opportunity for holes,” said Nathalie Eddy, a field advocate with Earthworks, an environmental organization that monitors and reports methane emissions to regulators. “This industry is built to leak.”

Oil and gas engineers say that’s the system releasing pressure before it compromises equipment, well production, or worker safety. But those pressure valves leak methane.

Covid-19

NM jail populations plummet amid joint efforts to avoid COVID-19 outbreak; positive test rates are low

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The Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center Jeff Proctor/NMID

New Mexico’s 27 adult county jails have slashed their combined population by a third since the new coronavirus began tearing through the state 11 weeks ago, according to data gathered by the New Mexico Association of Counties. On March 13, two days after New Mexico saw its first confirmed COVID-19 cases, counties held nearly 6,000 men and women behind bars; by  Wednesday, May 27, around 4,000 sat in jails around the state, the vast majority of them awaiting trial. District attorneys, public defenders and county officials told New Mexico In Depth the rapid population reductions could signal a long-term shift toward locking fewer people up, in a state that historically has had higher rates of incarceration in jails than most others. Some of the largest dips have been in counties hardest hit by the virus, including McKinley (more than a 60% decrease) and San Juan (with a 45% decline). The numbers appear to be ticking back up since the low point on May 1, but Grace Philips, general counsel for the New Mexico Association of Counties, calls the overall trend a “significant reduction.”

The sharp decline comes from a joint effort to avoid an outbreak in jails of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus that has infected tens of thousands of inmates and guards nationwide, killing hundreds.

Covid-19

Highly rated nursing homes deserve scrutiny for pandemic preparation

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Advanced Health Care facility in Albuquerque. Tara Armijo-Prewitt/New Mexico In Depth

We published a story this week about the nursing home industry resisting for years a federal mandate to plan for disasters including pandemics. About 43% of nursing homes nationally have been caught violating the requirement, including some with deadly COVID-19 outbreaks. 

The story by New Mexico In Depth reporter Bryant Furlow and partners at ProPublica and the Raleigh, NC-based News & Observer newspaper features a COVID-19 outbreak and deaths at a nursing home in Albuquerque, Advanced Health Care. As of yesterday, 102 of 335 New Mexicans who have died due to the COVID-19 pandemic were residents of nursing homes, and another 30 were residents of other long-term care facilities. We don’t know how many, if any, staff of nursing homes have died. 

It’s important to know that AHC of Albuquerque earned a 5-Star rating — the highest level — from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

coronavirus

Nursing Homes Fought Federal Emergency Plan Requirements for Years. Now, They’re Coronavirus Hot Spots.

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Advanced Health Care facility in Albuquerque. Tara Armijo-Prewitt/New Mexico In Depth

This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power, and The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina. The N&O and New Mexico In Depth are members of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Sign up to receive ProPublica stories as soon as they’re published. On Dec.

2020 Election

Fewer polling places present challenges for Native voters

Gwyneth Doland, New Mexico In Depth By |

As the state gradually reopens from its coronavirus closure, it’s not only nurseries, bike shops and clothing stores that must figure out how to do business while maintaining social distancing—county clerks across the state are conducting their first primary election during a pandemic. But the number of polling places has been slashed, mail service has been interrupted in some areas and voting advocates are concerned that there will be folks, especially in Native American communities, who could be left out. Indian country has been hit hard by COVID-19, as NMID reported in mid-May. Native Americans represent 58 percent of the state’s cases. As a result, many Pueblo and tribal governments have closed their lands to non-residents and established curfews in an effort to slow transmission of the virus.