Democratic governor blasts Biden admin drug program over fentanyl crisis: 'Knew people would die'

Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham this week slammed a Biden administration Drug Enforcement Administration program that allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to flood across the border and into her state.

The statement comes after Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt said in an interview with Just the News last week that a DEA agent has evidence that his agency and federal prosecutors let more than one million fentanyl pills flow onto the streets of New Mexico during the Biden era and then tried to silence him from testifying after he blew the whistle. 

The governor said she asked state Attorney General Raúl Torrez to investigate whether federal agents broke state law by allowing lethal drugs to remain in New Mexico, and if so, to prosecute those responsible.

"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," she continued. "Hundreds of New Mexican kids growing up without stable parents. All while the federal government stood by."

Grisham highlighted her own attempts at stemming the flow of fentanyl into New Mexico, highlighting how she had asked the Biden and Trump administrations for more help and declared the surge of fentanyl as a "public health emergency." 

She also sent National Guard troops to the cities of Albuquerque and Española.

"While my administration was doing everything we could to stem the tide of fentanyl coming into our state, the federal government deliberately allowed it to flood in," she lamented. "New Mexican lives are not the federal government’s cost of doing business. I plan to hold the federal government accountable for this disaster."

The DEA has rejected media interpretations of the operations, telling the Daily Signal that the operations "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.”

The governor's comment occurred one day before DEA Administrator Terrance Cole asked DEA Assistant Inspector General Sean O'Neill to conduct an independent review of agency operations in New Mexico.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.