DEA stood back and took no action as Fentanyl caused the deadliest drug epidemic in American history, government records show

The Drug Enforcement Administration permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to enter communities in New Mexico between 2023 and 2025, even as the agency worked to combat the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. Government records and accounts from three current and former DEA agents, as reported by Associated Press, reveal that federal investigators repeatedly monitored shipments of the synthetic opioid but opted not to seize them.

This strategy was employed as prosecutors aimed to build larger criminal cases against drug traffickers, a move that has sparked intense internal debate about public safety and agency priorities. DEA Special Agent David Howell, who filed a whistleblower complaint in 2023, expressed deep frustration with the practice. “We poisoned our community to make cases,” Howell said. “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.”

The approach involved allowing drug transactions to proceed so agents could track the narcotics through the supply chain. While this is a standard tactic for substances like cocaine, the extreme potency of fentanyl makes it a unique threat. Because just a few milligrams can be fatal, the Justice Department previously established protocols encouraging agents to seize the opioid whenever it was practicable.

However, the strategy of letting these pills reach the streets shocked many veteran agents

In one instance documented in a 66-page report, agents tracked a delivery at an Albuquerque mobile home park in June 2023. They identified the shipment as 74,000 pills, yet the drugs were not seized at the time. Days earlier, investigators had watched the same distribution ring deliver another shipment hidden in a spare tire.

Alex Uballez, who served as U.S. attorney in New Mexico from 2022 through last year, defended the practice as a necessary trade-off. He argued that the office had limited resources and that targeting larger organizations would ultimately save more lives. “The bigger fish are worth catching,” Uballez said, “and that will save more lives.”

The DEA maintains that its actions were lawful. Spokesperson Amanda Wozniak stated that the investigative decisions were reasonable and consistent with Department guidance. She noted that the investigations involved court-authorized wiretaps and real-time surveillance to target major trafficking networks. Regarding the specific concerns raised by whistleblowers, the DEA said, “Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts.”

Some agents compared this approach to the 2011 Operation Fast and Furious scandal, where the government allowed firearms to be trafficked to trace them to cartel leaders. One former DEA supervisor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, claimed he and his colleagues allowed millions of pills to go unseized during a multistate investigation last year. This specific operation eventually led to the largest fentanyl bust in the agency’s history in May 2025, which resulted in the seizure of more than 3 million pills.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility investigated these claims in 2024 and concluded that the decisions were reasonable, finding that the inaction did not pose a specific danger to public health.

Meanwhile, agents like Howell continue to question how the agency can reconcile these tactics with its own public awareness campaigns, such as the One Pill Can Kill initiative. For those on the ground, the risk remains a central point of contention. Tristan Leavitt, president of the whistleblower advocacy group Empower Oversight, stated, “It’s outrageous to put that many lives at risk in hopes of making a big case.”