New Mexico governor says state could seek billions after DEA let fentanyl hit streets

Susan Montoya Bryan, Jim Mustian And Joshua Goodman, the Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico’s governor said Monday that state officials could pursue billions of dollars in civil damages after revelations that U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents repeatedly allowed shipments of fentanyl to flow into drug-plagued communities as investigators sought to build bigger cases.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham vowed to take her outrage “right to the White House and Congress” to seek assurances the DEA is no longer using the risky law enforcement strategy in New Mexico — and that it is not being replicated elsewhere. Overdoses have surged in New Mexico, even as fentanyl deaths declined in other states.

“This is a stunning failure by the federal government,” the governor told reporters at a news conference in the state medical examiner’s office in Albuquerque, joining a host of state and local law enforcers and officials demanding answers. “It’s disgusting and despicable.”

The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson noted that President Donald Trump has classified fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction” and signed into law legislation cracking down on the synthetic opioid.

“Sadly, the United States is still recovering from Biden’s border crisis and the damage it caused,” Jackson wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “President Trump has totally secured the border and has taken bold actions to combat the scourge of fentanyl in American society.”

Lujan Grisham’s remarks came a week after AP reported that DEA agents repeatedly monitored — but did not seize — shipments of fentanyl as part of an effort to build bigger criminal cases between 2023 and 2025.

Current and former DEA agents, including whistleblower David Howell, told AP the strategy amounted to a gamble with public safety and may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules intended to safeguard the public.

The DEA initially denied Howell’s allegations in a statement to AP. But the agency later called upon the Justice Department’s independent watchdog to conduct its own investigation.

The fentanyl went unseized amid the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history and as the DEA led a public awareness campaign — “One Pill Can Kill” — emphasizing that even a few milligrams of the substance can be lethal.

New Mexico has responded swiftly to the revelations. Last week, the state’s attorney general announced a criminal investigation to determine whether any federal officials broke state law by knowingly exposing New Mexico residents to the synthetic opioid.

“We’re going to protect the rest of the United States from this kind of foul, ‘I need a big case’ effort no matter what the consequences,” Lujan Grisham said. “We’re angry because it’s immoral.”

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said fentanyl represents his city’s “No. 1 challenge,” driving crime and homelessness and straining health care resources.

“Using us in some sort of uninformed, undisciplined experiment that’s literally killing our people — that’s what this is,” he said. “This should outrage every single New Mexican.”

Trump last week shared a link on his Truth Social page to an article attributing the scandal to the “Biden-run Justice Department.” In a statement to AP last week, the Justice Department similarly said “the alleged conduct occurred under the Biden Administration’s disastrous open border policies.”

Howell first came forward during the Biden administration in 2023 — and was sidelined for doing so — but he continued to flag unseized fentanyl shipments as recently as last year, and the largest he documented happened two months into Trump’s second term, a 1.8-million pill haul DEA learned about but did not intercept in March 2025.

Howell also revealed that the Justice Department in 2024 changed internal guidelines that had urged agents to seize fentanyl whenever “practicable,” affording them more discretion to preserve longer-term investigations. Empower Oversight, the whistleblower advocacy group representing Howell, called on the Justice Department Monday to reinstate those earlier protocols so authorities “try to seize fentanyl whenever there is probable cause.”

Lujan Grisham has criticized both administrations as not doing enough to stem the tide of fentanyl in New Mexico, and pointed to the death last year of a 15-month-old girl who reportedly swallowed some of her mother’s drugs in Española, a town ravaged by grinding poverty and addiction.

It is not clear whether any fatal overdoses in the state can be directly attributed to the DEA strategy. While overdose deaths nationwide fell 14% last year, government data show New Mexico tallied a 21% spike.

“Somebody must pay for the damage to the state, the public safety risks that will be shared by everyone here for a decade or more, and pay to try to right the wrongs and put people’s lives back together,” she said.

Lujan Grisham, who will leave office at year’s end after two terms as governor, said the worst part of being an elected leader is having to face the victims of what she called “senseless” devastation and loss.

“There are no words that can take away that pain,” she said, adding their experiences cannot be dismissed by politics as usual. “Whatever we can do to prevent the next loss for the next family, is the work that we’re all collectively doing.”

Mustian and Goodman reported from Miami.

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