By Kevin Hendricks, The Paper.
New Mexico’s overdose crisis just got a new villain, according to the governor: the federal agency that’s supposed to be fighting it.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham says reporting from the Associated Press and Albuquerque Journal revealed the Drug Enforcement Administration knowingly let hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills reach New Mexico communities — including one delivery of 74,000 pills to an Albuquerque mobile home park that agents tracked but never stopped. Attorney General Raúl Torrez has now opened a formal investigation into whether DEA agents broke state law.
The allegation
A whistleblower complaint, first reported by the Journal and AP, alleges DEA agents watched as 1.8 million fentanyl pills moved through New Mexico, holding off on seizures in hopes of catching bigger players up the supply chain. Lujan Grisham says the agency monitored shipments and tallied exact pill counts while the drugs hit the streets.
“New Mexican lives are not the federal government’s cost of doing business,” the governor said in her statement.
The investigation
Torrez announced the probe Friday, following a June 24 letter from Lujan Grisham raising the allegations. In his June 26 response, Torrez committed to sending a Touhy letter demanding DEA records and said his office will weigh “the full range of available remedies” — criminal prosecution, civil litigation under the Federal Tort Claims Act, or both.
Torrez also flagged the legal hurdles ahead: a 1890 U.S. Supreme Court precedent, In re Neagle, gives federal officers acting within their duties substantial protection from state prosecution under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. Torrez said that doesn’t rule out charges, but it “creates significant legal barriers that must be carefully evaluated.”
“If the DEA stood by while poison flooded our communities, that is not a bureaucratic failure. It is a betrayal of the people it was sworn to protect,” Torrez said.
Years of warnings
Lujan Grisham says she’s pressed federal officials for more help since 2022, writing to FBI Director Christopher Wray and three separate letters to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting additional agents, plus a September 2025 letter to current AG Pam Bondi. She’s also declared a public health emergency over fentanyl and deployed the National Guard to Albuquerque and Española.
Read the original reporting:
- Albuquerque Journal: Feds allow deadly drugs to walk onto Albuquerque streets
- Associated Press: DEA fentanyl unseized drugs New Mexico
New Mexico Department of Justice: NMDOJ.GOV | (505) 490-4060