House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer launched an investigation into a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tactic that allowed fentanyl to flood the streets in New Mexico during the Biden administration between 2023 and 2025.
Comer accused the Biden administration of reversing protocols instilled during the first Trump administration by “requiring agents to make reasonable efforts to prevent the distribution of” fentanyl:
In November 2019, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) issued Risk Mitigation protocols that prioritized addressing the lethality of fentanyl to ensure it did not have an opportunity to harm the public. In early 2023, the Biden Administration’s DEA disregarded these previously established protocols in New Mexico. The DEA instead allowed shipments of up to 100,000 pills to remain in the hands of criminals resulting in “walking fentanyl,” where the pills were not intercepted and allowed to continue to move through criminal networks. DEA agents monitored shipments of pills but did not seize them, allowing hundreds of thousands of pills to hit the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025. As a result, New Mexico was heavily effected by fentanyl with a nearly 21 percent increase in fentanyl poisoning deaths compared to a 14 percent decrease in the United States overall.
Comer asked Attorney General Todd Blanche to release all records “related to monitoring and mitigating the threat of fentanyl in New Mexico.”
“The current Trump Administration has prioritized addressing this threat, however it is important to understand the full impact of the choices that were made by the prior administration to disregard a policy that prioritized public safety,” said Comer. “While DEA agents may not have the resources to intercept every single known shipment, a policy directing them not to intercept significant shipments is unconscionable and undoubtedly resulted in considerable harm and lives lost.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez already launched a criminal investigation into the operation.
“New Mexico already ranks among the states hardest hit by fentanyl overdose deaths,” Torrez said. “And the families who have lost children, siblings and parents to this crisis deserve a full accounting of what the federal government knew, what it did and what it failed to do.”
An Associated Press report exposed Biden’s DEA with information from three current and former DEA agents.
Biden’s DEA claimed it wanted to build bigger cases and prosecute more criminals.
However, the strategy backfired (not surprisingly), causing more deaths and destruction.
Records showed the AP that DEA agents kept “such detailed intelligence about drug deliveries that agents were able to tally precise pill counts.”
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