ALBUQUERQUE — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration permitted the distribution of hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills in New Mexico as part of an effort to build bigger federal prosecutions. DEA agents monitored a fentanyl shipment at an Albuquerque mobile home park in 2023 but did not seize it. In their investigative report, agents documented that 74,000 fentanyl pills had been delivered during this incident.

David Howell, a 19-year veteran of the DEA, filed a formal whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel in late 2023. Howell claimed the DEA gambled with public safety and violated U.S. Justice Department rules regarding the seizure of fentanyl. He stated that the decision not to seize the 74,000 pills was akin to "providing one fentanyl pill to each person at a football stadium." The whistleblower report was sent to the White House in September.

The Office of Special Counsel found a "substantial likelihood of wrongdoing" concerning the DEA's actions and asked the Justice Department to investigate the agency. Alex Uballez, who served as the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque at the time of the 2023 incident, acknowledged that authorities sometimes "walk" drugs in the name of catching an ultimately "bigger fish." Uballez said the approach saves more lives than attempting to interdict every shipment.

DEA spokesperson Amanda Wozniak stated that "public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts." Wozniak wrote in an email that "the investigative decisions at issue were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances and consistent with Department guidance."

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 drugs to go unseized. They also found that the DEA's inaction posed no "specific danger to public health." The Justice Department rewrote its non-public rules to afford law enforcement more discretion in deciding whether to seize fentanyl.