Trump's DEA Defends Biden-Era Fentanyl Surveillance Program. New Mexico's Democratic Governor Wants Someone Prosecuted.

Since the DEA asked the Justice Department's inspector general to review this operation, reported on June 25, the political fallout has intensified with the most significant break coming from inside the Democratic Party itself.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a statement Wednesday calling the program "reckless and dangerous" and demanding accountability. She wrote state Attorney General Raúl Torrez, also a Democrat, asking him to investigate whether federal agents violated state law and "to prosecute anyone responsible — regardless of whether they are a federal agent or not."

"The DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway," Grisham said, according to the Daily Signal. "The result: hundreds of New Mexican parents burying their kids."

What the Program Actually Was

The Associated Press first reported the operation's existence this week. According to AP, it ran from 2023 to 2025 and involved DEA agents allowing drug shipments to proceed — including a delivery of 74,000 fentanyl pills to a mobile home park in Albuquerque — while conducting surveillance aimed at building larger cases against trafficking networks.

Biden-appointed former U.S. Attorney Alex Uballez, who oversaw the program in New Mexico, defended the approach. "The bigger fish are worth catching," he told the AP.

The DEA, now under Trump-appointed Administrator Terry Cole, issued a statement Wednesday saying that public descriptions of the program are "false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts." The agency said operations were authorized by federal courts under Title III of the Wiretap Act, which requires judicial approval for intercepting communications, and that agents conducted real-time surveillance targeting larger trafficking organizations. A 2024 review by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility concluded the operation was reasonable and consistent with department guidance, according to the DEA.

The Unanswered Questions

The DEA's defense has limits. When the Daily Signal asked whether fentanyl was allowed to traffic in areas beyond New Mexico, and exactly when the program ended, the agency's spokesperson did not answer those specific questions. The AP reported the program ran from 2023 to 2025 but did not pin down specific start or end dates, or whether it concluded because of the change in administrations.

Those gaps matter. If the operation extended beyond New Mexico, the scale of the public health exposure could be significantly larger than what has been reported so far.

Grisham's Case Against the Logic

The strongest argument for the program is the standard law enforcement rationale: surveillance operations that allow some criminal activity in the short term can dismantle entire supply chains, preventing far greater harm. Courts authorized this one. Career prosecutors signed off. An independent DOJ review called it lawful.

Grisham directly engaged that argument and rejected it on the evidence. "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," she said. "New Mexico now leads the nation in the increase in overdose deaths for the second straight year, despite deaths dropping nationwide."

That statistic is a blunt rebuttal. Whatever the operation achieved tactically, New Mexico's overdose trajectory worsened during and after the period the program was running. Whether a causal link exists between the two facts has not been established, but Grisham's point is that the stated public safety justification did not produce measurable public safety improvement.

Grisham also noted she wrote to Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland twice requesting more resources to fight fentanyl in New Mexico, and sent a similar request to Trump's former Attorney General Pam Bondi. Neither letter, she implied, produced results proportionate to the crisis.

The Fast and Furious Comparison

President Trump earlier this week shared a news story characterizing the operation as a potential "Fast and Furious 2.0," a reference to the Obama-era ATF program that allowed illegal firearms to flow into Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious resulted in weapons being found at the 2010 murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, a congressional contempt citation against Attorney General Eric Holder, and years of oversight battles.

The parallel is imperfect. Fast and Furious lost physical track of weapons and had no real-time recovery mechanism. The DEA says this operation involved active, court-supervised surveillance with real-time monitoring. Whether that distinction proves meaningful depends on what the inspector general review produces.

Where This Goes

The DEA inspector general review, requested by the agency itself, is now running in parallel with whatever New Mexico AG Raúl Torrez decides to do with Grisham's referral. A state prosecution of federal agents for conduct they say was federally authorized would be legally extraordinary and almost certainly contested on Supremacy Clause grounds, but Grisham put the referral on record. Whether Torrez opens a formal investigation is the next concrete development to watch.