DEA Let Fentanyl Reach Streets, Whistleblower Alleges

An explosive investigation by the Associated Press has revealed that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025, with agents monitoring shipments in real time but deliberately choosing not to seize them. According to AP News, three current and former DEA agents and internal government records detail a strategy aimed at building larger federal cases against major drug traffickers — at the cost of allowing a deadly synthetic opioid to flow into communities.

A Deadly Gamble with Public Safety

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, has been at the center of the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. A few milligrams — an amount that fits on the tip of a pencil — can kill the average adult. The White House designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” in December 2025, underscoring the extreme danger it poses.

Yet according to whistleblower David Howell, a 19-year DEA veteran and former Navy service member, the agency’s tactics amounted to a deadly gamble. “We poisoned our community to make cases,” Howell told AP. “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.”

How the Strategy Worked

In June 2023, DEA agents surveilled a fentanyl transaction at a mobile home park in Albuquerque. According to a 66-page DEA report reviewed by AP, agents deciphered coded cellphone chatter and watched as traffickers delivered 74,000 pills — a figure later confirmed by federal prosecutors in a court filing. The pills were not seized. Days earlier, agents had watched the same distribution ring deliver a spare tire hiding another suspected fentanyl shipment that also went unseized.

Howell reported in his whistleblower disclosures that agents permitted the delivery of at least 1.8 million fentanyl pills in a single multi-state investigation. A former DEA supervisor, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that colleagues allowed “millions” of pills to go unseized. “The amount we ultimately seized was hitting the streets every month while that case was going on,” the former supervisor said, adding that the DEA could have dismantled the organization six months earlier.

The “Bigger Fish” Debate

Alex Uballez, who served as U.S. Attorney for New Mexico from 2022 to 2025, defended the approach. “The bigger fish are worth catching, and that will save more lives,” Uballez told AP. He acknowledged that authorities at times allowed drug shipments to go unseized as part of a broader effort to gather intelligence and build cases against major trafficking organizations, citing limited resources.

But critics argue that fentanyl’s unique lethality makes this calculus unacceptable. Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group, called the practice “outrageous.” Leavitt’s organization has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General to investigate Howell’s claims.

A Policy Shift in the Shadows

The Justice Department’s original 2017 “Fentanyl Protocols” — which have not previously been made public — called on agents to “seize or otherwise prevent the distribution” of fentanyl “as soon as practicable,” stating that “protecting public safety is paramount.” However, as PBS NewsHour reported, the Justice Department rewrote the rules in 2024 to afford law enforcement more discretion, allowing agents to balance public safety risks against investigative benefits.

Current and former agents likened the DEA’s fentanyl strategy to the infamous “Operation Fast and Furious” scandal of 2011, in which ATF agents allowed straw buyers to smuggle approximately 2,000 assault weapons into Mexico. Two of those guns were found at the scene of a fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

The Whistleblower’s Ordeal

Howell filed a formal whistleblower complaint in late 2023 with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC). The OSC initially found a “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” and asked the Justice Department to investigate. But the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded in 2024 that the DEA and U.S. attorney’s office had made reasonable decisions and that their inaction posed no “specific danger to public health.”

Howell paid a heavy price for coming forward. The DEA relegated him to desk duty for more than a year, docked his performance evaluations, and prosecutors barred him from testifying in federal court, citing his “pattern of refusing to heed” admonitions to allow drugs to go unseized during long-term investigations.

New Mexico’s Escalating Crisis

The consequences of these decisions are stark. While overdose deaths nationwide fell 14% in 2025, New Mexico experienced a 21% spike. Albuquerque has a neighborhood so besieged by drugs it is known as “War Zone.” The DEA recorded its largest fentanyl bust in history in Albuquerque in May 2025 — more than 3 million pills seized — but the investigation that led to that bust, according to whistleblowers, involved permitting massive quantities of the drug to reach the streets first.

What Comes Next

The revelations raise fundamental questions about accountability and transparency in federal drug enforcement. Empower Oversight has called for further investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the DOJ Inspector General. The 2024 rewrite of the Fentanyl Protocols — moving toward more discretion rather than less — suggests a policy-level endorsement of the practice that whistleblowers say is costing lives.

As Howell put it: “We did nothing but sit back and watch.” The question now is whether Congress and the Justice Department will do the same.