Feds Said the NMDOJ Paralegal Used "Internal Access." She Had Worked There 16 Days.

The federal government has a story it would like New Mexico to hear this week. Angel Ramirez, 45, a paralegal at the New Mexico Department of Justice, allegedly ran a drug hub out of her Northwest Albuquerque home, and agents pulled out what the DEA calls the largest single seizure of fentanyl powder in DEA New Mexico's history.

The federal announcement says Ramirez leveraged her government employment, her clean record and her "internal access to the justice system" to give the operation a veneer of legitimacy.

Attorney General Raúl Torrez's office has a different calendar. A spokeswoman told the Albuquerque Journal that Ramirez was hired Oct. 13 and was fired immediately after her arrest. Agents searched her home Oct. 29. The state DOJ also said it had received no communication from federal law enforcement and has no indication her arrest had anything to do with her job there.

Sixteen days. That is how long the "position of public trust" in the federal announcement actually lasted.

Agents executed the search warrant Oct. 29, a day after a federal magistrate judge signed it. According to the DEA, they found duffel bags holding:

Ramirez is charged with possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and using and carrying a firearm during a drug trafficking crime. If convicted, she faces 15 years to life. After a 45-minute hearing Nov. 3 that included testimony from a DEA agent, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura Fashing ordered her held until trial. No trial date has been set. A criminal complaint is an allegation, and Ramirez is presumed innocent.

The arrest happened Thursday. The government announced it the following Tuesday, in a prerecorded statement from First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison, who said agents have "a lot more work to do."

We asked the U.S. Attorney's Office what the phrase meant. The answer, from the prosecution team: Ramirez's government position "provided her with insider knowledge and credibility" that the government contends helped create a veneer of legitimacy.

Read that again. It is a description of having a job, not an allegation that she used one. The definition names no case file, no database, no office she reached into. On where she worked before, the office said her prior employment "is described in the publicly filed court documents" and it has no additional comment. The Journal reports those documents describe her as a paralegal who previously worked for state prosecutors' offices in New Mexico.

What the government did choose to do was put the New Mexico Department of Justice in the headline of its own press release. The DEA titled it "Arrest of State Employee." It did that while, according to the state DOJ, never calling the state DOJ.

This is not the first time the DEA has announced a New Mexico fentanyl record.

In May 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the largest fentanyl bust in DEA history, built partly in Albuquerque, with more than 3 million pills seized. In June 2026, the Associated Press and the Albuquerque Journal reported that the same investigation involved agents letting fentanyl move unseized while they built the case. A former DEA supervisor told the AP that "millions" of pills went unseized in that investigation.

The practice now has a name in New Mexico: fentanyl walking. The first agent to raise it, Albuquerque DEA Special Agent David Howell, filed a whistleblower complaint in 2023 after he was reprimanded for stopping a shipment being tracked on a court-approved wiretap. Two more DEA whistleblowers have since alleged retaliation. The DOJ Inspector General is reviewing the Albuquerque office at DEA Administrator Terrance Cole's request, and the House Oversight Committee is looking at it too.

Meanwhile, New Mexico's overdose deaths rose 21 percent in the same stretch that national overdose deaths fell 14 percent.

In August, Torrez sued the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court for the DEA's records, saying the state deserves "to know the truth about the DEA's practice." The federal government has refused to hand them over.

So the arrangement in Albuquerque this week is this: the federal agency under investigation for letting fentanyl into New Mexico announced a record fentanyl seizure, and pinned it on an employee of the state agency investigating it.

KOB 4 asked the U.S. Attorney's Office whether the Ramirez case used a federal wiretap and whether any fentanyl was allowed into New Mexico as part of the broader investigation. Officials declined to answer. The Journal asked Ellison's office the same thing. No immediate comment.

We asked too. The office said it does "not comment on investigative techniques or nonpublic details of ongoing criminal cases," and that questions about the Inspector General's review should go to the Inspector General. The DEA's El Paso division referred our questions to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The DEA describes a drug trafficking organization allegedly importing large quantities into Albuquerque. Forty-four kilograms of powder does not arrive in one trip. How long agents watched this organization, and what moved while they watched, is the only question that matters to a state burying its residents at a rate the rest of the country has started to escape.

The feds were happy to tell New Mexico where the fentanyl ended up. They will not say how long they watched it get there.

Still open for the U.S. Attorney's Office and the DEA: Which prosecutors' offices employed Ramirez, and when? How long was the organization tied to her home under investigation before the Oct. 29 search? Did this investigation use wiretaps or controlled deliveries, and did any fentanyl move unseized while agents watched?

For the New Mexico Department of Justice: What background check did Ramirez clear before her Oct. 13 hire? Did she have access to any case files in her 16 days?

This story is based on the DEA's Nov. 3 announcement, the criminal complaint and the government's motion to detain, written answers from the U.S. Attorney's Office for New Mexico on Nov. 5, and reporting by the Albuquerque Journal, KRQE and KOB 4, plus earlier AP, Journal and KOB reporting on DEA fentanyl walking. The DEA El Paso Division referred our questions to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The New Mexico Department of Justice has been asked about Ramirez's background check and access; its answer will be added with a dated update. We are looking for anyone with knowledge of how long this investigation ran. Tips and corrections: [email protected].