An AP investigation released today revealed that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Albuquerque District Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico routinely “walked” fentanyl shipments from at least 2023 to March 2025, standing down even as agents watched deliveries of 100,000 pills or more.
Empower Oversight, which represents the whistleblower who made protected disclosures about the decision to allow fentanyl to be “walked” has called on the Inspector General and congressional oversight committees to investigate the disclosures made by DEA Special Agent David Howell, a 19-year veteran who reported that federal agents deliberately allowed millions of fentanyl pills to flood New Mexico streets in violation of explicit Justice Department policy. Since making the protected disclosures, Howell has faced retaliation for sounding the alarm.
The fentanyl “walking” directly violated 2019 Department of Justice (DOJ) protocols requiring agents with probable cause to seize fentanyl, a substance that President Trump has designated a weapon of mass destruction. Instead of addressing the violations, officials reprimanded Howell for stopping a suspected fentanyl vehicle, stripped him of his law enforcement duties, and blocked him from testifying in court.
“The same agency that warns the public, ‘one pill can kill,’ should not intentionally allow hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets. It’s outrageous to put that many lives at risk in hopes of making a big case. There has to be a better way than to repeat the mistakes of Fast and Furious, and if not for brave whistleblowers, yet again, the truth of what the government did would stay hidden.”
The fentanyl walking is eerily similar to an initiative of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that ran from 2008-2011. The initiative sought to allow illegal gun purchases to proceed, or “walk,” rather than intercepting them immediately, in hopes of tracking the weapons up the supply chain to major Mexican drug cartel leaders. ATF agents monitored straw purchasers buying thousands of firearms from Arizona gun dealers and deliberately let those guns cross the border into Mexico, believing they could build bigger cases against cartel kingpins. Instead, the agency lost track of the vast majority of the roughly 2,000 weapons it allowed to walk. The guns turned up at crime scenes across Mexico and the United States. The operation came to public light after walked weapons were found at the scene of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona, and whistleblower John Dodson came forward and made protected disclosures about the gunwalking.
Empower Oversight has written to Acting Deputy Attorney General Colin McDonald pressing for an immediate halt to the retaliation, and has formally requested that DOJ Inspector General William Blier investigate whether fentanyl walking extended beyond Albuquerque.
Congressional notification letters have been sent to Chairmen Chuck Grassley, Rand Paul, Jim Jordan and James Comer.
The letters to the congressional offices, the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General can be found here.
The AP article can be found here.
An article by the Albuquerque Journal can be found here.
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