Federal drug agents in New Mexico knowingly allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach communities between 2023 and 2025 in pursuit of larger criminal cases, according to DEA agents and government records, raising questions about whether public safety was sacrificed for investigative strategy.
The practice—in which DEA agents monitored shipments of the synthetic opioid but deliberately chose not to seize them—has drawn sharp criticism from within the agency itself. DEA Special Agent David Howell, who filed a whistleblower complaint in 2023, stated bluntly: "We poisoned our community to make cases," and added, "Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, 'We don't really know what happened to the drugs.' But we 100% got people killed."
The Scale of Unseized Drugs
The scope of the operation reveals the human stakes at hand. In one documented case in June 2023, agents surveilled a transaction at a mobile home park in Albuquerque where traffickers delivered 74,000 pills—a figure federal prosecutors later confirmed in court filings. Days earlier, the same distribution ring delivered another suspected fentanyl shipment hidden in a spare tire, which also went unseized.
A former DEA supervisor, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, disclosed that agents allowed "millions" of pills to go unseized during a multi-state investigation. Howell reported in his whistleblower disclosures that agents permitted the delivery of at least 1.8 million fentanyl pills on that case alone. That investigation ultimately culminated in May 2025 when then-Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the largest fentanyl bust in DEA history, resulting in the seizure of more than 3 million pills.
Yet the former supervisor raised a critical question about priorities: "The amount we ultimately seized was hitting the streets every month while that case was going on," and noted that the DEA could have dismantled the organization six months earlier.
Policy Shift Favors Discretion
The decision to allow drugs to flow reflects a significant shift in federal policy. The Justice Department developed internal "Fentanyl Protocols" in 2017 that called on agents to "seize or otherwise prevent the distribution" of fentanyl "as soon as practicable," stating that "protecting public safety is paramount," regardless of whether seizures compromise investigations.
However, in 2024, the Justice Department rewrote those protocols to give law enforcement more discretion. The revised rules now say investigators "may exercise discretion in determining whether to take action to prevent the trafficking of fentanyl," allowing them to balance public safety risks against "the benefits to be achieved through preserving the investigation." The DEA's agent manual similarly describes seizing drugs as "the usual course of action" but permits exceptions "where the investigative objectives can be better achieved by not doing so."
Alex Uballez, who served as U.S. attorney in New Mexico from 2022 through last year, defended the approach by citing limited resources and arguing that prosecuting larger organizations has greater impact. "The bigger fish are worth catching," he said, "and that will save more lives." He also questioned the reliability of pill counts based on intercepted communications.
Community Impact and Institutional Response
The consequences have been severe in New Mexico communities already ravaged by the opioid crisis. Howell began flagging overdose deaths that might have been caused by pills the DEA permitted to flow to dealers, including the death of a 15-month-old toddler who died after ingesting burned fentanyl residue in Española, New Mexico, last year. Albuquerque, which has a neighborhood known as "War Zone," remains at the epicenter of the fentanyl epidemic. While overdose deaths nationwide fell 14% last year, New Mexico tallied a 21% spike.
The DEA's response to Howell's concerns has drawn criticism from oversight advocates. Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, said, "It's outrageous to put that many lives at risk in hopes of making a big case." Howell reported that the DEA relegated him to desk duty for more than a year, docked his performance evaluations, and internal records showed prosecutors barred him from testifying in federal court, citing his "pattern of refusing to heed" admonitions to allow drugs to go unseized.
When Howell took his allegations to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, it initially found a "substantial likelihood of wrongdoing" and asked the Justice Department to investigate. However, the Office of Professional Responsibility found in 2024 that the DEA and U.S. attorney's office had made reasonable decisions in allowing drugs to go unseized and that their inaction posed no "specific danger to public health." The Office of Special Counsel deemed the Justice Department's report reasonable.
The DEA said in a statement that "the investigative decisions at issue were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances and consistent with Department guidance." DEA spokesperson Amanda Wozniak wrote, "Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts," and said the investigations involved court-authorized wiretaps "in which agents and prosecutors conducted real-time surveillance, intelligence gathering, and operational analysis targeting larger drug trafficking organizations."
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Albuquerque did not answer questions about the unseized fentanyl shipments but said in a statement that the "conduct" Howell brought to light happened during the prior administration. Tessa DuBerry, a spokesperson for the office, wrote, "The current leadership of this office is focused on aggressively investigating and prosecuting fentanyl trafficking and disrupting the criminal organizations responsible for distributing these drugs."
Military Escalation in Drug War
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has escalated enforcement efforts through military action. The U.S. military conducted a strike against a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, immediately killing two people and leaving six survivors. This latest attack brings the number of people killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military to more than 210 since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls "narcoterrorists" in early September. More than 60 such strikes have occurred.
It remains unclear whether the survivors of Thursday's strike were rescued. In this case and the strike on June 16 that left two survivors, U.S. Central Command said it notified the U.S. Coast Guard. The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search for survivors from the June 16 strike with "no signs of survivors or debris" but had no comment on the current strike.
The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. A black and white video posted on X showed a boat speeding through the water before being struck by a visible projectile and bursting into flames.
President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in "armed conflict" with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as necessary to stem drug flow and fatal overdoses. However, his administration has offered little evidence to support claims of killing "narcoterrorists." Critics have questioned the overall legality and effectiveness of the strikes, noting that fentanyl behind many U.S. drug overdoses is typically trafficked over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
On Thursday, U.S. lawmakers demanded that the Pentagon release "unedited video" of the first strike after reports emerged that the U.S. chose to conduct a follow-up strike on survivors of its initial attack. Two men on the boat initially survived that attack, which killed nine others, and were clinging to wreckage when the vessel was struck again, killing them. The White House confirmed the follow-up strike, insisting it was done "in self-defense" to ensure the boat was destroyed and in accordance with laws of armed conflict. Some legal scholars said a second strike killing survivors would have been illegal under any circumstance, armed conflict or not. The Pentagon's watchdog said in May that it planned to look into whether the U.S. military followed an established targeting framework when carrying out the strikes, focusing on the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle and not on the legality of the strikes.
Why This Matters:
These parallel enforcement strategies reveal fundamental tensions in how federal institutions approach drug trafficking and public safety. The DEA's decision to allow hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach communities in pursuit of larger cases raises questions about who bears the cost of law enforcement priorities—and whether vulnerable populations in communities like Albuquerque, already experiencing a 21% spike in overdose deaths, should be expected to absorb that cost. The rewriting of Justice Department protocols in 2024 to grant agents more discretion in allowing drugs to reach streets represents a significant shift in institutional priorities, one that whistleblowers and oversight advocates argue prioritizes case-building over immediate public safety. Simultaneously, military strikes on boats in the Pacific—which have killed more than 210 people and lack clear evidence of drug trafficking—suggest a militarized approach to drug enforcement that may not address the documented land-based routes through which most fentanyl enters the United States. Together, these developments illustrate how enforcement decisions made in federal agencies and military command centers have direct, measurable consequences for specific communities and individuals.