Federal agents watched known fentanyl shipments pass into New Mexico, counted pills and did not seize them, and a later rule change allowed discretion that critics say cost lives.
In June 2023, agents outside a mobile home park in Albuquerque watched coded phone chatter and followed a delivery down to the pill level: 74,000 fentanyl tablets. They documented the shipment precisely and yet did not seize it. Days earlier another load hidden in a spare tire went untouched too.
This was not a one-off mistake. Between 2023 and 2025, the agency allowed hundreds of thousands of pills to reach the street, and in at least one multistate investigation agents reportedly let at least 1.8 million pills be delivered before a takedown. The decisions happened under new departmental guidance adopted in 2024 that gave prosecutors and agents discretion where a 2017 protocol had prioritized immediate seizure.
Veteran Special Agent David Howell went public about what he saw and told investigators, “We did nothing but sit back and watch.” He tracked deaths that could be tied to the pills his team allowed to move, including a 15-month-old who died after ingesting burned fentanyl residue. Howell told reporters plainly, “We poisoned our community to make cases. … But we 100% got people killed.”
The earlier rule was blunt: agents were instructed to “seize or otherwise prevent the distribution” of fentanyl “as soon as practicable,” because public safety “is paramount.” The 2024 rewrite flipped that mandate into discretion, saying agents “may exercise discretion in determining whether to take action to prevent the trafficking of fentanyl,” weighing public safety against “the benefits to be achieved through preserving the investigation.”
That change in language turned public safety from the controlling order into one factor among many, and in New Mexico the results were immediate. Overdose deaths fell about 14 percent nationwide in the last year, but New Mexico went the other way with a 21 percent rise. Officials who allowed shipments to proceed argue the tradeoff aims to net bigger cartel targets, but local communities paid a deadly price.
This was not a failure at the border. Most illicit fentanyl comes through legal ports of entry, concealed in cars and cargo, and the majority of trafficking convictions are of American citizens. The problem in Albuquerque was not a porous fence; it was agents choosing to sit and observe shipments they had under surveillance. You cannot blame smugglers for a shipment your own agents are watching.
Howell followed internal channels and filed a complaint, and the Office of Special Counsel found a “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” and asked the Justice Department to investigate. The department’s internal review, however, judged the choices reasonable and found no “specific danger to public health.” That finding closed the loop and left the field decision intact.
For speaking out, Howell was moved to desk duty, had his evaluations docked and was barred from testifying in federal court, accused of a “pattern of refusing to heed” orders to let drugs go unseized. Meanwhile, prosecutions continued to tout large cases, including one that culminated in what was described as the largest fentanyl bust in history—more than three million pills—yet supervisors later said the ring “was hitting the streets every month while that case was going on.”
Officials defending the approach say the tactic saves more lives in the long run by catching higher-level traffickers. As U.S. Attorney Alex Uballez put it, “the bigger fish are worth catching, and that will save more lives.” That argument collides with the facts on the ground in New Mexico where documented pills moved and deaths rose.
The administration’s own public messaging belt included a campaign called “One Pill Can Kill.” That slogan was running while the very same agency counted pills and watched them leave. Critics point out the bitter irony and say it underscores a policy mismatch between slogans and street tactics.
There is precedent that alarms conservatives: agents recalled Operation Fast and Furious, in which federal agents let firearms move to Mexican cartel buyers and later lost track of many of them. After that scandal, the Justice Department banned the tactic for firearms. The 2024 fentanyl guidance effectively revived a similar approach for a drug far deadlier than guns in the hands of cartel buyers.
Advocacy groups pushing Howell’s complaint to Capitol Hill framed the core objection plainly: “It is outrageous to put that many lives at risk in hopes of making a big case.” The agents on the ground did the math—74,000 pills in a single deal and more than a million across a case—and the choice to watch rather than seize now sits at the center of a bitter debate about priorities, accountability and public safety.
