Biden’s DEA Watched As Pills Flooded Neighborhoods

Federal agents let deadly fentanyl shipments roll into New Mexico neighborhoods while officials insisted everything was “reasonable” and “by the book.”

Story Snapshot

Drug Enforcement Administration agents tracked massive fentanyl loads into New Mexico from 2023 to 2025 without stopping them, aiming for bigger cartel cases.^[2]
A whistleblower says at least 1.8 million pills were allowed to “walk,” warning, “We poisoned our community to make cases.”^[2]
The Justice Department’s watchdog cleared the strategy as lawful and not a “specific danger to public health,” deepening public anger and distrust.^[14]
New Mexico’s Democratic governor is demanding a criminal probe of the federal government, saying officials knew people would die and let it happen anyway.^[6]^[8]^[9]

DEA Strategy Let Fentanyl Flood New Mexico Streets

From 2023 to 2025, agents in the Drug Enforcement Administration tracked shipments of fentanyl pills moving through New Mexico but often chose not to seize them.^[2] Records and interviews reviewed by reporters show that hundreds of thousands of pills, and possibly more, reached the streets while agents watched and counted.^[2] In one case, officials allowed a load of about 74,000 pills to be delivered to an Albuquerque mobile home park under government surveillance.^[8]^[9] This was done as part of long wiretap investigations aimed at higher-level traffickers.

DEA Special Agent David Howell filed whistleblower disclosures saying agents were told not to stop vehicles they believed were carrying fentanyl.^[13]^[14] Howell says that in one multistate case, at least 1.8 million pills were allowed to be delivered while prosecutors focused on building larger conspiracy charges.^[2]^[13] A former supervisor, speaking anonymously, backed that description and said “millions” of pills went unseized during the operation.^[2] Howell summed up the cost bluntly: “We poisoned our community to make cases.”^[7]^[12]

Justice Department Backs DEA While Public Outrage Grows

After Howell’s complaint, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility reviewed the New Mexico cases in 2024.^[14] The office concluded that the decisions not to take “immediate and overt” enforcement action were made with proper oversight and were reasonable under the rules.^[14] Investigators said the agency’s fentanyl guidance allows teams to use judgment and weigh public safety against long-term goals, and they found no violation of law or abuse of authority.^[14] That internal finding now sits at the center of a fierce debate over accountability.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has strongly denied that it “knowingly permitted” fentanyl to reach communities, calling that claim a fundamental mischaracterization of the facts.^[2]^[6] Spokesperson Amanda Wozniak said the New Mexico cases used court-approved wiretaps, real-time surveillance, and intelligence analysis to target larger trafficking organizations, not to let drugs loose on purpose.^[2]^[3] Former United States Attorney Alex Uballez, who oversaw the strategy, argued that given limited resources “the bigger fish are worth catching,” even if that means some shipments are not seized right away.^[2]^[13]

Governor, Families, And Both Sides See A System That Failed Them

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, reacted with anger after reports revealed federal agents tracked shipments and pill counts while fentanyl poured into her state.^[6]^[9] She said officials made a “deliberate decision” to let hundreds of thousands of pills flood communities, despite knowing the White House had labeled fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.^[9] In a statement, she highlighted the 74,000-pill delivery into an Albuquerque mobile home park and said federal agents “did nothing” to stop it.^[9] She has asked the state attorney general to open a criminal investigation into the federal government’s actions.^[6]

New Mexico governor calls for criminal probe of DEA allowing fentanyl shipments to hit streets https://t.co/ezqIS7Venq

— Robert Don Gifford (@GiffordLawFirm) June 26, 2026

The outrage crosses party lines and taps into a wider feeling that federal agencies serve themselves before they serve the public. Critics note that New Mexico has suffered some of the highest overdose death rates in the country, and view the “reasonable decisions” finding as insiders protecting their own.^[2]^[7]^[14] Conservatives point to the program as proof of Biden-era failure on drugs and borders, while liberals see it as another example of law enforcement risking lives in vulnerable communities.^[8] Many ordinary Americans from both camps look at the numbers and statements and see a deeper problem: a federal system that gambles with their safety, then insists everything is fine.