The student advocates met with Torrez and criminal justice professor Ida Curtis at Milton Hall, where the attorney general shared his experience addressing human trafficking.
Source: NMSU News (via Facebook)
Photos: Courtesy
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez made two stops in Las Cruces this week focused on issues involving the safety of children and young people.
Torrez visited New Mexico State University Tuesday, Sept. 15, to meet with Humans for Humans, a student organization working to increase awareness of human trafficking and its prevention.
The student advocates met with Torrez and criminal justice professor Ida Curtis at Milton Hall, where the attorney general shared his experience addressing human trafficking.
The visit was followed Wednesday by a broader community discussion at Doña Ana Community College’s East Mesa Campus.
Torrez scheduled a “Keeping Kids Safe” town hall from 6 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the campus auditorium, where the New Mexico Department of Justice said he would discuss efforts to protect children online, legislative proposals affecting New Mexico working families and hear from residents about community safety.
The online-safety discussion follows a major New Mexico court ruling involving Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
A New Mexico jury found Meta liable in March for 75,000 violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act and imposed $375 million in civil penalties. In August, the First Judicial District Court also found Meta’s platforms constituted a public nuisance in New Mexico and ordered the company to provide $567 million toward addressing the youth mental health crisis.
The combined financial exposure from the two phases of the case totals $942 million, according to the New Mexico Department of Justice.
The August judgment also requires a series of changes to Facebook and Instagram in New Mexico for five years, including strengthened protections for teen accounts, additional safeguards against sextortion and child sexual exploitation, default privacy protections for minors and restrictions on overnight push notifications for users younger than 18.
The court stopped short of imposing the more extensive age-verification requirements sought by the state. Torrez has since said he intends to pursue legislation addressing age verification and broader social media safety during the New Mexico legislative process.
The two Las Cruces appearances placed those statewide efforts alongside work already underway locally — first with NMSU students focused on human trafficking awareness and prevention, followed by a public discussion centered on child and community safety.
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