New Mexico Governor Demands Criminal Investigation Into DEA Over Fentanyl Shipments That Reached Streets
New Mexico’s governor on Wednesday demanded a criminal investigation into the Drug Enforcement Administration, following an Associated Press investigation that found federal agents had deliberately allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach the streets over a two-year period as they pursued larger drug-trafficking cases.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham asked the state’s attorney general to examine whether the agency’s actions violated New Mexico law. The move represents an extraordinary challenge to a federal law enforcement agency at a time when fentanyl remains one of the deadliest public health threats in the country.
The request stems from an AP investigation revealing that between 2023 and 2025, DEA agents repeatedly permitted major fentanyl shipments to continue moving through New Mexico rather than seizing them immediately, aiming to build cases against higher-ranking traffickers. Lujan Grisham’s call for a criminal review shifts the debate from questions of enforcement strategy to whether federal agents themselves crossed legal lines in pursuit of larger organizations.
Current and former DEA agents told AP the approach amounted to a gamble with public safety in a state already ravaged by the fentanyl epidemic. Some said it may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules designed to protect the public from a drug the White House last year labeled a “weapon of mass destruction.”
“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 DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the governor’s statement. The agency has previously argued it would not be feasible to seize every drug shipment. In an earlier statement to AP, DEA spokesperson Amanda Wozniak wrote: “The investigative decisions at issue were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances and consistent with Department guidance. Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts.”
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 limited resources and his belief that prosecuting larger trafficking organizations has a greater impact than intercepting every suspected drug transaction.
It remains unclear whether any fatal overdoses in the state can be directly tied to the DEA’s strategy. While overdose deaths nationwide fell 14% last year, government data show New Mexico recorded a 21% spike during the same period.
“New Mexican lives are not the federal government’s cost of doing business,” the governor wrote. “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.”
The AP investigation cited three current and former agents and government records, including an internal report of a 2023 delivery of 74,000 pills that the DEA surveilled — but did not seize — at a mobile home park in Albuquerque.
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 the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General to investigate his allegations.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, called Howell’s revelations “a scandal of the highest order” and said in a social media post that he plans to find out how many American lives were lost due to the DEA’s inaction.
Victims’ groups also spoke out, noting the contradiction between the DEA’s approach in New Mexico and its prominent “One Pill Can Kill” campaign, which warns that as little as a few milligrams of fentanyl can cause a fatal overdose.
“Knowing the Justice Department had guidelines to seize the opioids whenever practical — and the fact these were ignored — is truly heartbreaking,” said Michael Glownia, who lost his daughter to fentanyl in 2023 and founded a nonprofit to support families suffering similar losses.
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Mustian reported from Miami.