DEA let hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills reach New Mexico

Federal drug agents let hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills move into New Mexico while monitoring the shipments to build larger trafficking cases, a tactic now under scrutiny for its cost in lives and oversight. In one whistleblower complaint, Albuquerque agent David Howell said more than 300,000 pills had already reached the streets by September 2024, a scale that put the state’s fentanyl crisis in direct collision with federal enforcement strategy.

The shipments described in the case were not small. Records and agent accounts reviewed in the investigation included a 150,000-pill load, a 50,000-pill shipment and a 74,000-pill deal that agents watched without moving immediately to seize the drugs. Federal prosecutors and investigators defended the approach as a standard way to identify higher-level traffickers and strengthen cases, but critics inside and outside law enforcement said the practice crossed a line when the drug involved was fentanyl, where even tiny amounts can be lethal.

The tension sits at the center of DEA rules and Justice Department guidance. Internal policy at the time said seizure should happen when practicable, and updated fentanyl protocols still emphasized public safety. The DEA has said its tactics were lawful and fit long-running undercover and wiretap operations, and it has denied that it was engaged in so-called walking of drugs in New Mexico. Howell and other agents argued that the danger was obvious because each monitored shipment increased the odds that lethal pills would reach users before any arrest could be made.

The fallout was especially sharp in New Mexico, where overdose deaths have been among the highest in the nation for most of the last two decades. State health data show the overdose death rate has more than tripled since 1990, fentanyl deaths have risen dramatically, and New Mexico ranked seventh in the nation for total drug overdose death rate in 2023, including the District of Columbia. Outside analysis put the state at 775 overdose deaths in 2024, a rate of 36.4 per 100,000 people.

The dispute also lands against a broader federal enforcement push. On July 15, 2025, Attorney General Pamela Bondi said DEA had seized about 44 million fentanyl pills, 4,500 pounds of fentanyl powder and nearly 65,000 pounds of methamphetamine since Jan. 20, 2025. That aggressive seizure record now sits beside a harder question in New Mexico: whether a strategy designed to catch bigger traffickers ended up deepening the public-health emergency it was supposed to contain.