New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has called for a criminal investigation into the Drug Enforcement Administration after an Associated Press investigation revealed that federal agents allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach the streets over a two-year period while pursuing larger drug-trafficking cases.
The governor asked the state's attorney general to examine whether the agency's actions violated New Mexico law. The AP investigation found that DEA agents repeatedly allowed major fentanyl shipments to continue moving through New Mexico between 2023 and 2025 rather than seize them immediately, as agents sought to build cases against higher-ranking traffickers.
Current and former DEA agents told AP the strategy amounted to a gamble with public safety in a state ravaged by the fentanyl epidemic and may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules intended to safeguard the public from a drug the White House last year designated as a "weapon of mass destruction."
The Human Cost of Strategic Delay
"There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were," Lujan Grisham said in a statement. "Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway."
The timing of these decisions is particularly troubling given New Mexico's overdose crisis. While overdose deaths nationwide fell 14% last year, government data show New Mexico tallied a 21% spike. Michael Glownia, who lost his daughter to fentanyl in 2023 and founded a nonprofit organization to support families suffering similar losses, said, "Knowing the Justice Department had guidelines to seize the opioids whenever practical — and the fact these were ignored — is truly heartbreaking."
The AP investigation cited internal records, including an internal report of a 2023 delivery of 74,000 pills the DEA surveilled — but did not seize — at a mobile home park in Albuquerque. The decision to allow such substantial quantities to remain in circulation raises fundamental questions about institutional accountability and the prioritization of investigative strategy over immediate public safety.
Federal Justifications and Institutional Accountability
The DEA has contended it would not be plausible to seize every drug shipment. In a statement, the agency said "the investigative decisions at issue were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances and consistent with Department guidance." DEA spokesperson Amanda Wozniak wrote in an email, "Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts."
However, Alex Uballez, who served as U.S. attorney in New Mexico from May 2022 until February 2025, told AP that drugs went unseized at times due to his office's limited resources and his belief that prosecuting larger organizations has a bigger impact than intercepting every suspected drug transaction. This rationale—that resource constraints and prosecutorial strategy justify allowing dangerous substances to circulate—underscores a broader institutional problem: when federal agencies face capacity limitations, it is communities already bearing the heaviest burden of the opioid crisis who pay the price.
Whistleblowers and Congressional Response
DEA whistleblower David Howell, who filed a complaint drawing attention to the unseized fentanyl, spoke Wednesday with congressional staffers. Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group representing Howell, has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee and Justice Department's Office of Inspector General to investigate the agent's allegations.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Ohio Republican, called Howell's revelations "a scandal of the highest order" and said in a post on X he plans to find out how many American lives were lost due to the DEA's inaction. Victims groups also spoke out about DEA's inaction, saying its approach in New Mexico contradicts the agency's prominent "One Pill Can Kill" campaign that warns as little as a few milligrams of fentanyl can cause a fatal overdose.
Demanding Federal Accountability
Lujan Grisham made clear that state-level action is necessary. "New Mexican lives are not the federal government's cost of doing business," the governor wrote in her statement. "I plan to hold the federal government accountable for this disaster and will explore every possible avenue of action against the federal government to right these wrongs."
It is not clear whether any fatal overdoses in the state can be directly attributed to the DEA strategy. However, the fact that such an attribution cannot be definitively made does not absolve the agency of responsibility for allowing known quantities of a lethal substance to circulate in communities already experiencing a public health emergency.
Why This Matters:
This case exemplifies a critical tension in drug enforcement policy: when federal agencies prioritize long-term prosecutorial strategy over immediate public safety measures, it is vulnerable communities that bear the consequences. New Mexico's 21% spike in overdose deaths while the national rate declined suggests the state faces disproportionate exposure to fentanyl. The DEA's decision to allow hundreds of thousands of pills to circulate rather than seize them immediately reflects not just a tactical choice, but an institutional failure to prioritize the lives of the people most affected by the opioid crisis. The governor's call for criminal investigation and victims' advocacy groups' demands for accountability represent an effort to establish that public safety cannot be subordinated to investigative strategy. Whether the Justice Department has adequate resources to both intercept dangerous substances and pursue major traffickers is a structural question that demands legislative and budgetary solutions—not a rationale for allowing preventable deaths.