In a bombshell AP report, the Drug Enforcement Administration intentionally let record numbers of fentanyl ship into New Mexico in order to make cases against drug kingpins. From 2023 to 2025, the agency directed its field agents to let the deadly drug into the state despite the fact that it was in the middle of fighting the deadliest drug epidemic in US history.
The DEA instructed its agents to not intercept the shipments that they were aware of as federal prosecutors were sought larger cases against the traffickers. While it would be impossible for the agency to interdict every shipment of drugs that it knows about, the deliberate decision to let drugs into the state was a completely destructive decision that got Americans killed.
“We poisoned our community to make cases,” DEA Special Agent David Howell told AP in a series of interviews in New Mexico. “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.” – Jim Mustain and Joshua Goodman, Associated Press
While fentanyl overdoses fell by 14% nationally last year, New Mexico saw its rate increase by 21%. This can largely be attributed to the DEA’s decision to let the drugs in to help nail bigger cases.
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Because it only takes a few milligrams of fentanyl to kill the average adult, federal law enforcement has had to completely rethink how it handles drug investigations. With cocaine and heroine it was possible to let the drugs trickle further down the supply chain without risking as many lives, but it’s not with the synthetic pain killer. In fact, as deaths started to surge, the Justice Department set a policy that agents had to seize the opioid whenever it was practicable.
The former US attorney for New Mexico Alex Uballez – from May 2022 to February 2025 – justified this decision because of the strained resources his office had available. Uballez contends that catching the bigger fish will save more lives down the road. This policy did lead to the largest fentanyl bust in Albuquerque, NM history.
In a statement, the DEA argued that saying they intentionally let the deadly drug into New Mexico is misleading.
“Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts,” DEA spokesperson Amanda Wozniak wrote in an email. She 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.” – Jim Mustain and Joshua Goodman, Associated Press
In one operation reviewed by the AP, DEA agents watched 74,000 pills exchange hands after they’d cracked coded messages and watched the sell. This was days after they’d watched suspected dealers trade a tire which they believed had the opioid in it.
This decision to let the drugs into the state were the subject of a whistle blower complaint from DEA special agent David Howell. According to Howell, the agency let millions of the drug into New Mexico and the agency cannot account for all of the pills that were allowed to slip through.
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