LA County sheriff's agents conducting a raid targeting a marijuana grow operation linked to China. (Fox News)
Officials at the state Bureau of Cannabis Control said large Chinese grow operations have been dominating California – from suburban Riverside and San Bernardino Counties to homes in the Bay Area, up to the so-called Emerald Triangle near the Oregon border, the hub of state cannabis production.
"We've seen just tremendous explosion of Chinese folks coming in and buying land and then growing illegal marijuana," Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue told Fox News. "This scale that we're talking, I mean, we're talking thousands of different illegal grows within our community, and it's just perpetuated a lot of violence."
Arial images showed how marijuana cultivation in Siskiyou County has exploded since 2017, with as many as 8,000 grow houses now dotting the rural landscape. Each grow has averaged around a dozen acres with four to five plastic-covered "hoop houses" on site, each containing several hundred marijuana plants inside.
"Because it's so profitable and there's really hardly any consequences, the growth just continues," LaRue said. "In some instances, the money is going directly back to China. As for the workers, essentially, they're trafficking in labor, to do the cultivation. Seventy-five percent or more are undocumented individuals that we're running into, and in the last few years, those numbers have increased dramatically."
Cannabis growing at a pot farm with ties to China located in California. (Fox News)
Last week, 50 members of Congress asked the Justice Department for a briefing on illegal marijuana farms linked to Chinese nationals, citing the DHS effort.
"There is substantial evidence implicating the [Chinese Communist Party] in directly supporting illicit marijuana grow operations across the United States," the lawmakers wrote. "Further, the same DHS document indicated 270 suspected illicit marijuana operations in rural Maine generated an estimated $4.37 billion in revenue, far outpacing the $158 million from the state’s legal marijuana market last year… This issue is not limited to the illegal cultivation and distribution of marijuana. Allowing illicit marijuana farms tied to the CCP is a continued threat to national security, public safety, and human rights."
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"We know that this money is being funneled back to China," Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., one of the lawkmakers who signed the letter, told Fox News, "so the Chinese are using this as a moneymaking operation and also as an operation to destabilize life in the United States. The wide-open southern border is catalyzing this problem because the cartels are trafficking people across the border, and they're establishing these camps and they lock them in. It's a human catastrophe for everybody.
"Recently we've become concerned about some findings that the Chinese Communist Party is behind this newest wave of illegal grows. That's certainly happened. In my district, we've had some identified activity that's tied to the CCP, and so, that's why we are asking the DOJ to share with us the information that it's gathered, and to give us a briefing on what it is doing and what can be done to try and rectify this problem."
William La Jeunesse joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in March 1998 and currently serves as a Senior National Correspondent.
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