XPost: alt.gossip.celebrities, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns
XPost: soc.culture.intercultural
From: stick.a.fork.in.liz.cheney@shes.done
In article
governor.swill@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Kill the pot growers. Seriously. They were going to kill the slaves.
>
MOJAVE DESERT, Calif. — As more states legalize cannabis, law
enforcement officials say they are seeing an uptick in black
market operators using suspected human trafficking victims to
grow and trim marijuana sold in legal dispensaries.
But authorities and advocates say helping these victims can be
complicated because many don't admit to being trafficked and are
unwilling to work with law enforcement agencies to take down
smugglers and dealers.
Nine of those suspected victims were arrested during an early
morning raid in May in California's Mojave Desert. The cannabis
workers, all Chinese nationals who had traveled from New York,
attempted to flee as law enforcement officials executed a search
warrant on the secluded farm.
Speaking through a Mandarin translator, one woman said she found
the job through a Chinese website. Some listings reviewed by NBC
News did not mention specific salaries, and others said they
could be negotiated in person.
“I have no money. What hope do I have?” said a worker named Jin,
who asked to be identified only by his first name.
All the workers apprehended said they had previously been
employed in restaurants before making the trek west; several
said they were eager to return to relatives on the East Coast.
None had been paid for their labor and they were living in
cramped, uncomfortable trailers near the illegal grow operation.
A worker named Fang, who also asked to be identified only by her
first name, said she left her 8-year-old son behind in New York.
“It’s very dirty, it’s very messy,” she said of the trailer
where she had been sleeping.
When asked if she had been told the truth about the kind of work
she would be undertaking, Fang said no.
Fang, Jin and the other workers were charged with misdemeanors
and later released, according to the San Bernardino County
Sheriff’s Department. The workers had been tending to 25
greenhouses, where law enforcement officials said they recovered
about 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana. The facility likely
generated $8 million in revenue quarterly, officials said.
None of the workers said they had been trafficked, but law
enforcement officials said they suspected otherwise.
"It's common for them to not give up any information on their
trafficker, to tell us that they feel safe, because, ultimately,
we believe they're in fear of their own safety if they say
anything other than that to us," said Sgt. James Roy of the
Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
Attorney Xiaosheng Huang, who represents trafficking victims,
said many of his clients were exploited during the pandemic
after losing jobs in the hospitality industry. Desperate and
owing money to the people who smuggled them into the United
States, they sought employment anywhere they could find it,
including illegal grow operations in California, Washington,
Oklahoma and New Mexico.
In the last year alone, law enforcement officials in San
Bernardino County have shut down nearly 1,100 illegal grow
locations and more than 8,600 greenhouses, the sheriff’s
department said in a statement. This includes seizing more than
1.4 million cannabis plants, 97 tons of processed marijuana and
175 pounds of concentrated cannabis with an estimated street
value of $1 billion.
Other law enforcement investigations in Los Angeles and
Riverside counties pushed illegal cannabis seizures in the last
year to more than $1 billion, the California Department of
Cannabis Control said in a recent statement.
“This important milestone was reached through close
collaboration with local, state, and federal partners and
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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