Staggering amounts of fentanyl hit streets as the DEA watched and took no action, records show

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Even as we battle the deadliest drug epidemic in American history, US Drug Enforcement Administration Hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills were allowed onto the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025, according to three current and former DEA agents and government records reviewed by The Associated Press.

DEA agents have repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills but have not seized the pills, as federal prosecutors seek to bring larger criminal cases against traffickers of synthetic opioids that the White House designated last year as “”. weapon of mass destruction.”

But agents and experts said the tactic amounted to a gamble with public safety that potentially endangered Albuquerque and surrounding communities and may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules intended to protect the public.

“We poisoned our community to sue,” DEA Special Agent David Howell told the AP. a series of interviews in New Mexico. “Through our own willful blindness we can say: ‘We don’t really know what’s happening to drugs.’ But we killed 100 percent people.”

The DEA has long argued that it would not be reasonable to seize every shipment of every drug. But the strategy of allowing a staggering amount of counterfeit painkillers to hit the streets shocked many senior agents who spoke to the AP.

Getting illicit fentanyl off the streets, mostly produced in Mexican labs, has become the DEA’s top priority over the past decade As overdose deaths increase. At the same time, its lethality (a few milligrams can kill the average adult) has overturned time-tested tactics used to combat drugs such as cocaine and heroin. These methods include allowing drug transactions to be completed so agents can track narcotics throughout the supply chain. But fentanyl is so dangerous that the U.S. Department of Justice has developed guidelines for agents in such cases, encouraging them to seize the opioid when “feasible.”

Albuquerque has a drug-besieged neighborhood known as the “War Zone” and other areas in New Mexico. stay at the epicenter fentanyl epidemic. During Overdose deaths nationwide fell 14% last yearGovernment data shows a 21% increase in New Mexico.

Alex Uballez, who served as the U.S. attorney in New Mexico from 2022 until last year, said authorities have at times allowed drug shipments to be seized as part of a broader effort to gather intelligence and build cases against major drug traffickers. He said the approach reflected his office’s limited resources and his belief that prosecuting larger organizations could have a greater impact than banning every suspected drug transaction.

Last year, the DEA recorded the largest fentanyl bust in its history in Albuquerque.

“Bigger fish are worth catching,” Uballez said, “and it will save more lives.”

The DEA said in a statement that “the investigative decisions at issue were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances, and consistent with the Department’s guidance.”

“Public statements suggesting that DEA knowingly allowed fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts,” DEA spokeswoman Amanda Wozniak wrote in an email. He said the investigations included court-approved wiretaps “in which agents and prosecutors conducted real-time surveillance, intelligence gathering and operational analysis targeting larger drug trafficking organizations.”

Sensitive intelligence on drug deliveries

In some cases, the DEA had such detailed intelligence about drug deliveries that agents could calculate precise pill counts, according to reports reviewed by the AP.

In June 2023, for example, agents deciphered encrypted chats over cellphones and closely monitored a transaction at a mobile home park in Albuquerque, according to a 66-page report reviewed by the AP. Agents wrote in the report that traffickers delivered 74,000 pills as part of this deal; federal prosecutors later confirmed that figure in a court filing.

Another DEA report showed that days earlier, investigators watched the same distribution ring deliver a spare tire hiding another shipment of suspected fentanyl that had not been similarly seized.

“We did nothing but sit back and watch,” said Howell, who filed a formal whistleblower complaint in 2023 to draw attention to what he felt was a tactic that put public safety at risk.

It took months for federal authorities to catch the smugglers, and Howell, who participated in the surveillance, said authorities could not comment today on unseized shipments.

“It’s outrageous to put so many lives at risk in the hopes of building a big lawsuit,” said Tristan Leavitt, president of the whistleblower advocacy group Empower Oversight, which has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General to investigate Howell’s allegations.

A former DEA chief, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said he and his Albuquerque colleagues allowed the seizure of “millions” of pills during a multi-state investigation last year.

Agents in this case authorized the delivery of at least 1.8 million fentanyl pills, Howell said in whistleblower statements.

That investigation culminated in the largest fentanyl bust in DEA history, an operation then-Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in May 2025 that resulted in the seizure of more than 3 million pills, the former chief and Howell told the AP.

“The amount we ultimately seized was hitting the streets every month while this case was going on,” the former chief said, adding that the DEA could have disbanded the organization six months earlier.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albuquerque did not answer questions about the unseized fentanyl shipments but told the AP in a statement that the “conduct” Howell brought to light occurred during the previous administration.

“The current leadership of this office is focused on aggressively investigating and prosecuting fentanyl trafficking and dismantling the criminal organizations responsible for the distribution of these drugs,” Tessa DuBerry, a spokeswoman for the office, wrote in an email.

Uballez, the former U.S. attorney, said “estimated pill counts based on wiretapped phone calls are not reliable.”

“I don’t think I would dispute that drugs ‘walked,'” he said, referring to law enforcement’s tactic of allowing contraband to go unseized to further the investigation. “How much and how often and with what precision is incredibly difficult to answer in retrospect.”

To seize or not to seize

As fentanyl overdoses have become an epidemic over the past decade, the U.S. Department of Justice has developed an internal playbook to combat the deadliest drug crossing the Mexican border. The game plan coincided with a promotional campaign warning Americans that “One Pill Can Kill”; This was the DEA’s effort to highlight the unique dangers of fentanyl.

The department’s two-page “Fentanyl Protocols,” adopted in 2017, called on agents to “seize or prevent the distribution of ‘fentanyl’ as quickly as possible.” The rules, which have not previously been made public, stated that “the protection of public safety is paramount” regardless of whether the seizures jeopardize investigations.

The Justice Department rewrote the rules in 2024 to give law enforcement more discretion in such cases. The updated protocols say investigators “may use discretion in determining whether to take action to prevent fentanyl trafficking” and balance public safety risks with “benefits from continuing the investigation.”

The DEA rarely discusses the tactic of allowing drugs to be seized. The agency manual describes removing drugs from the streets as the “usual course of action” but adds: “There may be situations where investigative objectives would be better achieved by not doing so.”

The agency has long used “controlled deliveries,” in which drugs are kept under constant surveillance and often replaced with counterfeit narcotics, then taken off the air to recover them, according to current and former agents.

In interviews, many current and former agents likened the decision to allow fentanyl to the streets to the infamous “Operation Fast and Furious” scandal in 2011, when straw buyers smuggled as many as 2,000 assault weapons into Mexico in an attempt to trace the firearms back to cartel leaders.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives brutally attacked bipartisan criticism That’s after two of those guns turned up at the scene of the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent, and the Justice Department expressly prohibits agents from allowing firearms smuggling.

Whistle

Howell was so frustrated by his agency’s failure to seize fentanyl that he began flagging overdose deaths that could have been caused by the pills the DEA was allowed to flow to dealers. One of those cases involved a 15-month-old toddler who died last year after ingesting burnt fentanyl residue in Española, a New Mexico town wracked by grinding poverty and addiction.

Howell, who joined the DEA 19 years ago after a decade in the Navy, took his allegations to the US Special Counsel Office. The institution responsible for protecting whistleblowers initially detected “the possibility of a major mistake” and asked the Ministry of Justice to investigate.

In early 2024, Howell told the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility that DEA agents observed (not yet seized) separate deliveries of 150,000 and 50,000 fentanyl pills.

He added that the DEA and federal prosecutors “put themselves in a dangerous situation where they cannot prove that the fentanyl they could have stopped did not result in the death of a person.”

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility found in 2024 that the DEA and the U.S. attorney’s office made reasonable decisions in allowing the drugs to be seized and that their inaction did not pose a “specific danger to the public health.”

The Special Counsel’s Office, which critics say rarely overturns the agency’s findings, found the Justice Department’s report reasonable.

Howell, meanwhile, paid a price after coming forward. The DEA placed him on desk duty for more than a year and suspended his performance evaluations, according to Howell and DEA records. Internal records also show that prosecutors barred him from testifying in federal court, citing his “habit of refusing to pay attention” to allowing drugs to be seized during long-term investigations.

Pointing to the DEA’s own “One Pill Can Kill” campaign, current and former agents said they could not understand the watchdog’s finding that those tactics did not endanger the public. They stated that the drug was very dangerous and had to be processed in a special laboratory.

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Goodman reported from Miami.