The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach streets in New Mexico between 2023 and 2025 in pursuit of larger criminal cases, according to three current and former DEA agents and government records reviewed by The Associated Press. The controversial tactic—allowing monitored drug shipments to proceed unseized—has raised serious questions about institutional accountability and the balance between investigative goals and public safety.
DEA Special Agent David Howell, who joined the agency 19 years ago after a decade in the Navy, characterized the approach bluntly: "We poisoned our community to make cases." He 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." Howell filed an official whistleblower complaint in 2023 and later reported to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility that DEA agents had observed yet not seized separate deliveries of 150,000 and 50,000 fentanyl pills.
In one documented case in June 2023, during the third year of the unseized shipment period, agents closely surveilled a fentanyl transaction at a mobile home park in Albuquerque. A 66-page DEA report reviewed by the AP shows investigators watched traffickers deliver 74,000 pills as part of that deal—a figure federal prosecutors later confirmed in court filings. Days earlier, agents observed the same distribution ring deliver another suspected fentanyl shipment hidden in a spare tire, which also went unseized.
The Institutional Framework
The Justice Department's approach to this enforcement strategy shifted significantly during the period in question. The original "Fentanyl Protocols" developed in 2017 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 investigative impact.
However, in the second year of the crisis, the Justice Department rewrote these protocols in 2024 to grant law enforcement substantially more discretion. The revised rules now permit investigators to "exercise discretion in determining whether to take action to prevent the trafficking of fentanyl," explicitly 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 acknowledges "there may be instances where the investigative objectives can be better achieved by not doing so."
The DEA defended its conduct in an official statement, asserting that "the investigative decisions at issue were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances and consistent with Department guidance." DEA spokesperson Amanda Wozniak stated, "Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts," emphasizing that investigations involved court-authorized wiretaps with "real-time surveillance, intelligence gathering, and operational analysis targeting larger drug trafficking organizations."
The Cost to Communities
A former DEA supervisor, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, reported that he and his Albuquerque colleagues allowed "millions" of pills to go unseized during a multi-state investigation. Howell's whistleblower disclosures documented that agents on that case permitted the delivery of at least 1.8 million fentanyl pills. That investigation culminated in the largest fentanyl bust in DEA history, announced in the first year by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in May 2025, resulting in seizure of more than 3 million pills.
The former supervisor noted a stark reality: "The amount we ultimately seized was hitting the streets every month while that case was going on," and stated the DEA could have dismantled the organization six months earlier. Howell began flagging overdose deaths potentially caused by pills the DEA permitted to flow to dealers, including the death of a 15-month-old toddler in Española, New Mexico, who died after ingesting burned fentanyl residue last year.
Albuquerque, home to a neighborhood known as "War Zone," remains at the epicenter of the fentanyl epidemic. While overdose deaths nationwide fell 14% last year, New Mexico experienced a 21% spike, underscoring the regional severity of the crisis.
Official Response and Accountability Questions
Alex Uballez, who served as U.S. attorney in New Mexico from 2022 through last year, defended the approach, arguing that allowing some shipments to proceed reflected his office's limited resources and the belief that prosecuting larger organizations yields greater impact than interdicting every suspected transaction. "The bigger fish are worth catching," Uballez said, adding "and that will save more lives." He also questioned the reliability of pill counts "based on intercepted phone calls."
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Albuquerque acknowledged the matter in its current form, stating through spokesperson Tessa DuBerry that "the conduct Howell brought to light happened during the prior administration" and that "current leadership of this office is focused on aggressively investigating and prosecuting fentanyl trafficking."
However, the Office of Professional Responsibility found in the second year 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. Despite these findings, Howell reported being relegated to desk duty for more than a year, receiving reduced performance evaluations, and being barred from testifying in federal court, with prosecutors citing his "pattern of refusing to heed" admonitions to allow drugs to proceed during long-term investigations.
Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, offered a direct assessment: "It's outrageous to put that many lives at risk in hopes of making a big case." Current and former agents have compared the tactic to "Operation Fast and Furious," the 2011 gun-walking scandal in which straw buyers smuggled some 2,000 assault weapons into Mexico.
Maritime Enforcement Operations
In a separate enforcement effort, 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 attack represents one of more than 60 strikes conducted since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls "narcoterrorists" in early September, bringing the total number of people killed in such boat strikes to more than 210.
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 water before being struck by a visible projectile and bursting into flames. It remains unclear whether the survivors were rescued. U.S. Central Command notified the U.S. Coast Guard, which stated it had no comment on the current strike.
President Donald Trump has characterized the U.S. effort as being in "armed conflict" with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as necessary escalation to stem drug flow and fatal overdoses. However, critics note that fentanyl behind most U.S. overdose deaths is typically trafficked over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
In a previous strike on June 16 that left two survivors, controversy emerged after reports indicated the U.S. conducted a follow-up strike on survivors clinging to wreckage. The White House confirmed the second strike, insisting it was conducted "in self-defense" to ensure the boat's destruction and in accordance with laws of armed conflict. Some legal scholars questioned whether a second strike killing survivors would be legal under any circumstance. The Pentagon's watchdog announced in May that it planned to examine whether the U.S. military followed established targeting frameworks, specifically the six-phase Joint Targeting Cycle, though not the legality of the strikes themselves.
Why This Matters:
These developments raise fundamental questions about government institutional accountability and the limits of prosecutorial discretion in public safety matters. The DEA's decision to permit hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach communities—coupled with policy changes that granted law enforcement greater discretion to allow drugs to proceed unseized—represents a significant shift in how federal agencies balance investigative objectives against immediate community protection. The documented cost includes a 21% spike in overdose deaths in New Mexico while the national rate declined, suggesting the tactic's regional impact. The retaliation against Howell for raising safety concerns and the subsequent institutional findings that deemed the conduct "reasonable" highlight tensions between hierarchical institutional processes and individual accountability. Meanwhile, maritime enforcement operations targeting alleged traffickers raise separate questions about evidence standards and effectiveness, particularly given that the primary fentanyl trafficking route into the United States operates over land. Both cases underscore the importance of transparent rules, oversight mechanisms, and clear prioritization of public safety in federal law enforcement operations.