Current and former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and government records suggest that DEA permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico 2023-2025.

The details: DEA agents monitored shipments of fentanyl pills but did not seize them, as federal prosecutors sought to bring bigger criminal cases against traffickers. Agents and experts said the tactic imperiled communities and may have violated Department of Justice (DOJ) rules.

Fentanyl’s lethality upended interdiction tactics that had been used for other drugs — including allowing drug transactions to be completed so agents can follow the narcotics through the supply chain.
To address the higher risk of fentanyl, DOJ developed guidelines in 2017 that called on agents to “seize or otherwise prevent the distribution” of fentanyl “as soon as practicable.” The rules said that “protecting public safety is paramount,” irrespective of whether seizures compromise investigations.
DOJ rewrote the rules in 2024 to say investigators “may exercise discretion in determining whether to take action to prevent the trafficking of fentanyl,” weighing public safety risks against “the benefits to be achieved through preserving the investigation.”
One DEA agent reported overdose deaths that might have been caused by the pills DEA didn’t seize to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which found “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” and asked DOJ to investigate. But DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility found that DEA and the U.S. attorney’s office had made reasonable decisions in deciding to allow drugs to go unseized and that their inaction posed no “specific danger to public health.” The Office of Special Counsel deemed DOJ’s report reasonable.

Next steps: Following AP’s article, DEA Administrator Cole asked DOJ’s Inspector General to investigate these claims.

The request came a day after New Mexico’s governor asked the state’s attorney general to examine whether DEA’s actions violated state law, and Democratic lawmakers in the state sent Cole a letter asking for a briefing on DEA’s tactics.