Chinese migrants lured to Oklahoma marijuana farms victims of sex, labor trafficking, Drummond says

During impeachment proceedings against U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said increased drug and human trafficking involving foreign cartels and Chinese nationals can be blamed on the federal government for failing to secure the southern U.S. border.

“The one thing these criminals have in common is that they have no regard for our laws or public safety,” Drummond said during this week’s hearing in Washington, D.C. “Criminal illegal immigrants are not content with only growing black-market marijuana. They also produce and distribute fentanyl, and they engage in sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Oklahoma’s law enforcement community fights a constant battle against these evils.”

Drummond was one of three state attorneys general who testified before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee. The hearing was part of impeachment proceedings led by House Republicans seeking to prove Mayorkas has been “derelict in his duty” over handling the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In recent years, Oklahoma has seen a surge of illegal marijuana operations started by transnational criminal organizations, a flood of fentanyl pills that has led to numerous overdose deaths, and a rise in human trafficking that has turned deadly.

In November 2022, a Chinese national who formerly worked at a marijuana farm near Hennessey was alleged to have killed four people after demanding $300,000 be returned to him for his "investment" in the illegal enterprise.

Wu Chen, 46, was arrested in Florida two days after the execution-style shootings. Before being returned to Oklahoma, he told a judge, through a translator, that he feared being killed here because of mafiosos.

“The carnage of that day is but one tragic example of a failed system plagued by failing leadership,” Drummond said at the hearing. “Throughout Oklahoma, law enforcement comes into daily contact with foreign nationals who entered our country illegally or who remain here illegally, or both.”

Drummond testified that foreign nationals most often involved in illegal marijuana operations come from China and Mexico.

He said that over the past seven months his Organized Crime Task Force has investigated and is prosecuting more than 50 multi-jurisdictional criminal cases, the vast majority of which involve Mexican or Chinese drug syndicates.

The crimes range from prostitution to money-laundering to underground casinos.

In submitted written testimony, Drummond said investigators are finding job advertisements on international websites targeting and recruiting poor and rural Chinese.

“These ads, in Mandarin, are thinly veiled offerings to engage in criminal activity,” Drummond wrote. “One particularly distasteful ad recruits ‘girls under 50’ for ‘purely formal bed’ and ‘four days off a month.’”

The victims end up living in “wretched conditions” with some eating food from dog food bowls, Drummond wrote.

Drummond testified that illicit fentanyl was consumed in 54 overdose deaths in 2017. In 2022, the number of fentanyl overdose deaths rose to 474, he said.

Drummond testified that final figures are not yet available for 2023, but there were 317 fentanyl deaths in the first five months last year.

His office said this week “the failure of the Biden Administration to secure the nation’s southwest border is seriously endangering public safety in Oklahoma.”

In recent weeks, more than 10,000 migrants per day have arrived at the southwest border.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre recently said the United States each year sees an ebb and flow of migrants “and that’s what we’re seeing at this time.”

She accused House Republicans of playing politics instead of working with Democrats to address the problem.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Drummond says Chinese migrants lured to Oklahoma farms victims of sex, labor trafficking