ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In the midst of the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history, the Drug Enforcement Administration allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach New Mexico streets, according to three current and former DEA agents and government records reviewed by The Associated Press.
According to the AP, DEA agents repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills between 2023 and 2025 without seizing them as federal prosecutors sought to build larger criminal cases against drug traffickers.
“We poisoned our community to make cases,” DEA Special Agent David Howell told The Associated Press in a series of interviews. “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.”
A former DEA supervisor, speaking to AP on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, said he and colleagues in Albuquerque allowed “millions” of pills to go unseized during a multi-state investigation last year.
In some instances, the DEA had detailed intelligence on drug deliveries, including precise pill counts, according to reports reviewed by AP.
In one example cited by AP, agents deciphered coded cellphone communications and surveilled a transaction at a mobile home park in Albuquerque in June 2023. A 66-page report reviewed by The Associated Press states traffickers delivered 74,000 pills in that deal, a figure later confirmed in a federal court filing.
Days earlier, another DEA report reviewed by AP indicated investigators watched the same network deliver a shipment hidden inside a spare tire that was also not seized.
Months passed before federal authorities moved in on the trafficking organization. Howell, who participated in the surveillance, told AP that authorities today cannot account for the unseized shipments.
“We did nothing but sit back and watch,” Howell told The Associated Press. He filed a whistleblower complaint in 2023 alleging the tactic put public safety at risk.
Howell alleges that agents allowed at least 1.8 million fentanyl pills to be delivered during the investigation.
The investigation, Howell and the former supervisor told AP, later led to what was described as the largest fentanyl seizure in DEA history, announced in May 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, involving more than 3 million pills.
“The amount we ultimately seized was hitting the streets every month while that case was going on,” the former supervisor told AP, adding the organization could have been dismantled months earlier.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albuquerque did not directly address questions about the unseized shipments, but told AP in a statement that the conduct Howell raised occurred under the previous administration.
“The current leadership of this office is focused on aggressively investigating and prosecuting fentanyl trafficking and disrupting the criminal organizations responsible for distributing these drugs,” Tessa DuBerry, a spokesperson for the office, told The Associated Press.
Former U.S. Attorney Alexander Uballez told AP that estimated pill counts based on intercepted communications are not always reliable.
“I don’t think I’d contest that drugs are ‘walked,’” Uballez told AP, referring to a law enforcement tactic in which contraband is allowed to move to further an investigation. “How much and how frequently — and with what certainty — is incredibly difficult to answer in retrospect.”
Howell, who has worked with the DEA for 19 years after a decade in the U.S. Navy, told AP he grew increasingly alarmed by the strategy and began flagging overdose deaths potentially linked to the fentanyl shipments.
Among those cases, he cited the death of a 15-month-old child in Española, New Mexico, who he said was exposed to fentanyl residue.
Howell took his concerns to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. The agency initially found a “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” and referred the matter to the Justice Department.
The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded in 2024 that DEA and U.S. Attorney’s Office decisions to allow drugs to go unseized were reasonable and did not pose a “specific danger to public health.”
The Office of Special Counsel later found that review reasonable.
Following his disclosures, Howell told AP he was reassigned to desk duty for more than a year and received downgraded performance evaluations. Internal records also show prosecutors barred him from testifying in federal court, citing a “pattern of refusing to heed” guidance to allow drugs to move during long-term investigations.
