The Justice Department’s inspector general announced a new probe Monday to investigate allegations that DOJ knowingly allowed fentanyl to be bought and sold, as agents tried to bring a lengthy trafficking case to a close.
The investigation comes after an Associated Press report earlier this summer said the Drug Enforcement Administration allowed “hundreds of thousands” of pills to hit the streets in New Mexico from 2023 to 2025. The AP said investigators were trying to build a bigger case — but the result, the news wire said, was “a gamble with public safety.”
“Among other things, this review will seek to determine whether and how DOJ personnel evaluate and implement risk mitigation strategies, including interdiction, in investigations involving fentanyl trafficking,” the inspector general’s office said in announcing the probe.
The office specifically mentioned what happened in New Mexico, though it said the probe will focus on the last two years.
Officials said they will not substitute their own judgments for those made by DOJ lawyers and investigators, but will instead document those judgments.
The fentanyl case in New Mexico started under the Biden administration.
In one June 2023 incident, The AP said DEA agents tracked a transaction that involved 74,000 pills at a mobile home park in Albuquerque.
Those traffickers weren’t busted until months later, and the news wire said the pills transferred that day were never accounted for.
A DEA whistleblower, in a communication with the Office of Special Counsel, which defends whistleblowers, said he had evidence that the agency allowed “well over 300,000 fentanyl pills” to be delivered to residences in New Mexico.
The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility investigated and concluded the decisions were made in accordance with policy and “appeared reasonable under the circumstances.”
New Mexico’s attorney general has opened his own probe, following AP’s report.
Then-U.S. Attorney Alex Uballez defended the DEA’s approach to The AP, saying they landed “bigger fish” by waiting.
Fentanyl, an opioid whose spread as an illicit drug claims tens of thousands of lives a year, was so deadly that DOJ in 2017 wrote rules urging that the drug be seized as quickly as “practicable” during an investigation, according to report.
