New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made an extraordinary move Wednesday, calling on her state’s attorney general to launch a criminal investigation into the Drug Enforcement Administration following a bombshell Associated Press report revealing that federal agents allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to flow into communities over a two-year span.
The governor asked the attorney general to determine whether the DEA’s conduct violated New Mexico state law — a remarkable challenge to a federal law enforcement agency at a time when fentanyl continues to be one of the most lethal public health threats facing the country.
The AP’s investigation found that DEA agents repeatedly chose not to intercept major fentanyl shipments moving through New Mexico between 2023 and 2025, instead allowing the drugs to continue moving in hopes of building cases against higher-level traffickers. That revelation has transformed a debate over law enforcement tactics into a question of whether federal agents themselves broke the law in pursuit of bigger targets.
Current and former DEA agents told the AP that the tactic was a dangerous gamble in a state already devastated by the fentanyl crisis, and that it may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules designed to protect the public from a drug the White House designated last year as a “weapon of mass destruction.”
“There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were,” Lujan Grisham said in a written statement. “Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway.”
The DEA did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the governor’s statement. The agency has previously maintained that it would not be realistic to seize every drug shipment, and in an earlier statement to the AP said “the investigative decisions at issue were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances and consistent with Department guidance.”
DEA spokesperson Amanda Wozniak pushed back in an email, writing: “Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts.”
Alex Uballez, who served as U.S. attorney in New Mexico from May 2022 until February 2025, told the AP that drugs were sometimes not seized due to limited resources and his view that targeting larger trafficking organizations has more impact than stopping every individual drug transaction.
It remains unclear whether any specific fatal overdoses in New Mexico can be directly tied to the DEA’s approach. While overdose deaths across the country dropped 14% last year, government data show New Mexico experienced a 21% increase during the same period.
“New Mexican lives are not the federal government’s cost of doing business,” the governor wrote. “I plan to hold the federal government accountable for this disaster and will explore every possible avenue of action against the federal government to right these wrongs.”
The AP’s investigation relied on three current and former agents along with government records, including an internal report documenting a 2023 delivery of 74,000 pills that DEA agents monitored but chose not to seize at a mobile home park in Albuquerque.
DEA whistleblower David Howell, whose complaint first brought the unseized fentanyl to light, met with congressional staffers Wednesday. Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group representing Howell, has formally requested that both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General look into his allegations.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, described Howell’s disclosures as “a scandal of the highest order” and said in a post on X that he intends to determine how many American lives were lost as a result of the DEA’s inaction.
Victims’ groups also weighed in, saying the DEA’s approach in New Mexico directly contradicts the agency’s own “One Pill Can Kill” public awareness campaign, which warns that even a few milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal.
“Knowing the Justice Department had guidelines to seize the opioids whenever practical — and the fact these were ignored — is truly heartbreaking,” said Michael Glownia, who lost his daughter to fentanyl in 2023 and went on to found a nonprofit supporting families who have suffered similar losses.
