Trump's Blowing Up Narcos. Biden Ignored Them — Now We're Learning Just How Bad It Was.
A few days ago, I wrote an article for our VIPs, updating you on some of the various efforts the Donald Trump administration and our South and Central American allies are taking to pursue the cartels and narco-terrorists who flood our region with drugs and violence. You can check it out here: Boats Down, Tons Seized: Let's Check In On the Region's Anti-Narco Activity.
A lot of these stories don't make MSM headlines, but they're happening nearly weekly (I already have more to share in the days ahead). We are literally blowing up or intercepting narco-boats filled with drugs, taking down major drug trafficking players on land, and stopping the flow of substances, like fentanyl, into our country.
We already know that Joe Biden tried to turn our border into a free-for-all and treated narcos with kid gloves, but now, we're learning it's even worse than we imagined.
According to a new report out by the Associated Press, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) "permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025." Essentially, the agency knowingly allowed the drug to hit U.S. communities, so it could focus on going after bigger fish.
This was confirmed by current and former DEA agents and government records. Here's more:
DEA agents repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills — but did not seize them — as federal prosecutors sought to bring bigger criminal cases against traffickers of a synthetic opioid that the White House last year designated a 'weapon of mass destruction.'
Agents and experts, however, said the tactic amounted to a gamble with public safety that potentially imperiled communities in and around Albuquerque and may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules intended to safeguard the public.
'We poisoned our community to make cases,' DEA Special Agent David Howell told AP in a series of interviews in New Mexico. '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.'The DEA has long contended it would not be plausible to seize every shipment of every drug. But the strategy of allowing staggering amounts of counterfeit painkillers to hit the streets shocked several veteran agents who spoke with AP.
Ridding the streets of illicit fentanyl, manufactured mostly in Mexican labs, became the DEA’s top priority over the past decade as overdose deaths surged. At the same time, its lethality — a few milligrams can kill the average adult — upended time-tested tactics that had been used to combat drugs like cocaine and heroin. Those methods have included allowing drug transactions to be completed so agents might follow the narcotics through the supply chain. Fentanyl, however, is so dangerous that the Justice Department developed guidelines for agents in such circumstances, encouraging them to seize the opioid whenever 'practicable.'
As we all know by now, the United States suffered one of its worse drug overdose epidemics in history during the Biden years, and fentanyl, primarily produced by Mexican cartels using Chinese precursors, was the main cause of death. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), approximately 105,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2023 and nearly 80,000 of those deaths involved opioids. Between 70 and 75% of those opioid deaths involved fentanyl. In January 2024, the DEA declared it the "leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45."
Border Patrol and the DEA grabbed record amounts — over 27,000 pounds in 2023 — but experts say they only caught 10 to 20% of what was coming across the border. DEA testing in 2023 also revealed that seven out of 10 pills tested contained a potentially deadly dose of fentanyl.
New Mexico is one of the states that's been hit the hardest by the drug crisis, with communities in Albuquerque and rural areas taking the brunt of it. The AP report suggests that shipments, including one with 74,000 pills, delivered to a mobile home park in Albuquerque, were monitored and not seized. It also suggests that up to 1.8 million pills were allowed into the streets, while Biden's DEA focused on other cases.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a response on Wednesday, saying she's appalled by the decision. She said, in part:
Shockingly, the federal government stood by while monitoring shipments, tallying exact pill counts, and watching as these deadly drugs hit the streets.
There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were. Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway. The result: hundreds of New Mexican parents burying their kids. Hundreds of New Mexican kids growing up without stable parents. All while the federal government stood by.
If the justification for letting these pills flood our communities was that it would somehow make New Mexico safer down the road through bigger eventual busts, the results say otherwise. New Mexico now leads the nation in the increase in overdose deaths for the second straight year, despite deaths dropping nationwide.
Today, I wrote to Attorney General Raúl Torrez and asked him to investigate whether any federal agents broke state law when they allowed lethal drugs to remain on our streets, and to prosecute anyone responsible — regardless of whether they are a federal agent or not.
I have spent years working across two administrations — writing letters, traveling to Washington, meeting directly with President Joe Biden and his cabinet, pushing for accountability, asking for more federal agents to be deployed to New Mexico to help fight this crisis.
She added a list of actions she's taken to fight the crisis.
On June 21, 2022, I wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray, imploring the FBI to assign no less than 50 additional agents to New Mexico to stem escalating drug trafficking and violent crime.
On September 15, 2022, I wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland, requesting that the Department of Justice provide additional federal agents, resources and support to New Mexico law enforcement. We asked the department to match the level of investigative, analytical, and technical resources the FBI had deployed in its Buffalo, NY surge.
On August 8, 2023, I wrote again to Attorney General Garland, renewing my request that the DOJ expeditiously assign more federal agents to New Mexico.
On September 7, 2023, I wrote to Attorney General Garland for a third time, reiterating my request once more federal law enforcement support to curb violent crime, drug and human trafficking.
On September 4, 2025, I wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, once again requesting additional agents and resources.
I have declared the surge of drugs like fentanyl to be a public health emergency. I have deployed the National Guard to both Albuquerque and Española. While my administration was doing everything we could to stem the tide of fentanyl coming into our state, the federal government deliberately allowed it to flood in.
New Mexican lives are not the federal government’s cost of doing business.
I plan to hold the federal government accountable for this disaster and will explore every possible avenue of action against the federal government to right these wrongs.
Across the aisle, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) has vowed that he will find out just how many lives were lost due to this "scandal of the highest order." Good luck, Senator. It would be nice to know just how much the Biden administration's negligence in many areas cost the people of the United States, but I have a feeling it will take years to figure it all out, if we ever do.
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