The U.S. Justice Department's internal watchdog on Monday announced a review of a controversial tactic in which federal law enforcement allowed fentanyl to hit the streets to build bigger cases against drug traffickers.
What the Left Is Saying
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, is continuing a state investigation and recently threatened to sue the Justice Department after it refused to provide records he requested. "The state is bearing the societal and financial harms of an influx of fentanyl into its communities," Torrez wrote in a letter to federal authorities.
Torrez has called on the Justice Department to revert back to an earlier policy adopted in 2017 that called on agents to "seize or otherwise prevent the distribution" of fentanyl "as soon as practicable." The department rewrote those rules in 2024 to afford law enforcement far more discretion, citing "the benefits to be achieved through preserving the investigation."
What the Right Is Saying
Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio called the inspector general review a "responsible step" but emphasized that DEA agents face difficult operational decisions. "Our law enforcement professionals deserve support when they pursue major trafficking networks rather than getting bogged down in endless paperwork seizures," Jordan said in a statement.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, who was appointed by President Biden and leads the agency, stated that her request for an outside inquiry "should not be interpreted as reflecting any lack of confidence in the professionalism or integrity of DEA personnel."
A Justice Department spokesperson defended the 2024 policy shift, noting it was designed to help agents build cases against high-level traffickers. The department has not announced a timeline for completing the inspector general review.
What the Numbers Show
According to documents reviewed by AP, an internal DEA report detailed how agents watched and declined to interdict a fentanyl delivery of 74,000 pills.
Two additional DEA whistleblowers in New Mexico have come forward in recent weeks — one who said colleagues failed to seize 350,000 fentanyl pills during the first call intercepted in a 2024 wiretap investigation that resulted in the largest fentanyl seizure in DEA history.
The other whistleblower filed a complaint alleging agents monitored but did not arrest a drug courier making repeated deliveries of fentanyl from Phoenix to Albuquerque between 2022 and 2023. Agents estimated each delivery contained between 50,000 and 100,000 fentanyl pills that went unseized.
The Bottom Line
The inspector general's review marks an official examination into whether federal drug enforcement tactics prioritized building larger cases over immediate public safety — a policy shift the Justice Department made in 2024 when it gave law enforcement far more discretion to allow shipments to proceed rather than seizing them immediately. The White House previously designated fentanyl as a "weapon of mass destruction."
The investigation will focus on Justice Department policies and wiretap operations from the past two years, potentially revealing whether similar practices occurred beyond New Mexico.
Meanwhile, state authorities in New Mexico continue their own probe into whether DEA agents broke state law by allowing hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach Albuquerque streets.