The head of New Mexico’s child support enforcement agency this week called for the state to end its practice of intercepting child support payments and tax refunds headed to poor mothers and children — which the state claims as repayment to the government for welfare the moms received in the past — a practice revealed by ProPublica in an investigation this fall.
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Betina McCracken, acting director of the New Mexico Child Support Enforcement Division, penned an op-ed Wednesday in the Santa Fe New Mexican that presses the state Legislature to let as much as $6.9 million a year in child support collected from fathers flow directly to their families instead of diverting it into government coffers.

The op-ed, co-authored by Kari Armijo, deputy Cabinet secretary of the state’s Human Services Department, argues that the Legislature should provide more funding to the agency so that it doesn’t have to balance its budget on the backs of poor parents — like Amberly Sanchez, whose story ProPublica highlighted in September.