‘Knew People Would Die’: New Mexico Democrat Governor Erupts at Biden DEA Program Allowing Fentanyl Into State

New Mexico’s Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham blasted a Drug Enforcement Administration program that began in the Biden administration and allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to flood the state.

The governor said she wrote state Attorney General Raúl Torrez, also a Democrat, and asked him to investigate whether federal agents broke state law by allowing lethal drugs to remain in New Mexico, “and to prosecute anyone responsible — regardless of whether they are a federal agent or not.”

“There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were,” Grisham said in a statement Wednesday. “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.”

The Associated Press first reported this week on the program that ran from 2023 to 2025. It allowed a shipment of 74,000 fentanyl pills to a mobile home park in Albuquerque, under the DEA’s oversight.

“Shockingly, the federal government stood by while monitoring shipments, tallying exact pill counts, and watching as these deadly drugs hit the streets,” Grisham said.

The DEA has denied the characterization of the program in media reports, while former U.S. Attorney Alex Uballez, who oversaw the program, told the Associated Press it was justified, saying, “The bigger fish are worth catching.”

However, Grisham didn’t buy that argument.

“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,” Grisham said. “New Mexico now leads the nation in the increase in overdose deaths for the second straight year, despite deaths dropping nationwide.”

Although Grisham did not name former President Joe Biden in her statement, she noted that she twice wrote to Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland seeking additional resources for the state to fight the fentanyl crisis. She also said she wrote to President Donald Trump’s former Attorney General Pam Bondi with a similar request.

In response to an inquiry from the Daily Signal, a DEA spokesperson said in an email response, “The cases in question involved complex, court-authorized Title III investigations in which agents and prosecutors conducted real-time surveillance, intelligence gathering, and operational analysis targeting larger drug trafficking organizations.”

According to the DEA, fentanyl is about 100 times more potent than morphine, but illicit fentanyl is often mixed with other illicit drugs to increase its potency.

The combination of drugs can often be fatal. As little as two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal, according to the DEA.

The operation is reminiscent of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program under President Barack Obama’s administration dubbed Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed illegal guns to flow from the United States into Mexico for the purpose of tracking them to build a case against drug cartels. However, the government lost track of some of the guns, one of which was used in the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.