Feds Say Human Trafficking Charges Likely for Unlicensed Oregon Marijuana Grow Operation
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/08/20/southern-oregon-cannabis-raid-human-trafficking-forced-labor/
Excerpt:
The Josephine County Sheriff’s department raided a ranch in Southern Oregon’s Illinois Valley this week as part of an investigation into illegal cannabis cultivation, involuntary servitude, human trafficking and forced labor.
The raid was part of a larger investigation that began with the death of a man from a different suspected illegal cannabis farm, located in Cave Junction.
In that case, the man was driven to a Chevron gas station in critical condition and left there. The man later died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Within two days of his death, that Cave Junction farm had been harvested, and the workers had moved to the Illinois Valley ranch raided this week, which goes by the Q Bar X Ranch in Kerby, Oregon.
The allegation of human trafficking followed multiple 911 hang-up calls that came from the property, as well as information from a source who is remaining anonymous for their own safety. Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel said that on these farms, which have the earmarks of a cartel, the workers are often victims.
“We’ve heard of the threat of harm to your family if you don’t go with us,” Daniel said. “And then they are transported up to the location. From what we are understanding, these workers are not paid until the end of the year when the shipment goes out and the money is brought in. There’s not like a weekly payroll going on here.” [...]
These agencies seized ten firearms and $140,000 in cash this week. [...]
More than 250 law enforcement officers entered the property on Tuesday, they found the workers living in squalid conditions, sleeping on cardboard mats or in tents. Although the workers denied that they had been trafficked, Daniel, the sheriff, suggested that this could be because they were scared to talk.
Additionally, the following is the direct text of an article written by journalist Nick Morgan for the Oregon newspaper The Mail Tribune that was published January 22, 2022.
Homeland Security is working with state and local agencies to investigate a large marijuana grow thought to involve forced labor. So far no federal charges have been filed in an alleged 200-person human-trafficking case in the Illinois Valley [which is located in the state of Oregon] that began with a migrant worker left for dead at a Cave Junction gas station last summer. But a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations employee says he’s confident criminal charges will follow when the investigation is complete.
Robert Hammer, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations’ Seattle office, said the feds are looking into evidence of false claims and forced labor surrounding an August 17, 2021 raid on a 1,300-acre suspected illicit marijuana grow at Q Bar X Ranch in Kerby, Oregon. The Seattle office oversees the federal agency’s Pacific Northwest Division.
In a Thursday press conference, via Zoom, Hammer offered few specifics about the agency’s role investigating reports of forced labor and squalid working conditions at the grow site in rural Josephine County allegedly linked to a drug-trafficking organization out of Mexico.
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Legalize drugs and it will all be peace, love and grease with crime dropping and law enforcement able to put resources elsewhere./s
Feds Say Human Trafficking Charges Likely for Unlicensed Oregon Marijuana Grow Operation
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/08/20/southern-oregon-cannabis-raid-human-trafficking-forced-labor/
One down, another 2000 in the county to go, and more in the county next door.