Workers at illegal pot grows face threats, violence

Jun. 26—Workers are being lured to the Rogue Valley with promises they'll earn $100 an hour in the marijuana industry.

But dreams of earning big money are turning to nightmares for many who go months without pay, then face threats if they try to leave illegal marijuana grows and processing sites.

The Unete Center for Farm Worker and Immigrant Advocacy in Medford used to help workers file about 70 wage claims a year. The complaints ranged across industries from agriculture to construction, said Unete program coordinator Kathy Keesee.

In the last three months of 2021, Unete helped with about 200 wage claims just from people working in the cannabis industry. Many of the claims were related to illegal grows, although some legal growers also fail to pay workers, Keesee said.

"With the huge increase of cannabis wage complaints, what we saw was they're not just owed $200 or $300. Some of these people are owed up to $16,000 or $18,000. They're working the entire year in the industry and then not being paid," she said.

Keesee said many cases of workers not being paid go unreported. Immigrant workers who don't speak English well are vulnerable to exploitation by illegal marijuana growers, especially if they don't have documents to work legally in the U.S.

Growers threaten to call immigration officials or hurt workers' family members who live back in Mexico or other countries, Keesee said.

Workers who are brave enough to file wage claims with the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries might still never be paid. Keesee said the state agency often says there's not enough evidence.

Unete joined with local sheriffs, state legislators and others to detail a litany of negative impacts from illegal marijuana. They spoke at a meeting this month in Ashland with the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, which regulates alcohol and legal marijuana.

Keesee said growers often recruit day laborers from places like Los Angeles. Rumors are also spreading in other countries that there's money to be made in Oregon. Some local agricultural workers were pulled into the illegal marijuana industry when they lost farms jobs during the 2021 drought.

Many workers end up at isolated, squalid grow sites without cellphone service, running water, bathrooms or housing. They sleep in tents or alongside marijuana plants in plastic-covered temporary greenhouses known as hoop houses, Keesee said.

When it's time to trim harvested marijuana buds, they often work side-by-side in lawn chairs from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. in cramped buildings, she said.

"We're hearing more and more concerns being brought up by workers of women being raped or sold into prostitution. They work all day doing the trimming and in the fields — and in the evening they're prostituted by the growers there," Keesee said.

One woman reported to a grower that a man tried to rape her in her tent. The grower responded by menacing her, Keesee said.

"He said, 'We don't want any trouble here.' He showed her his gun at his side. Every time he would walk by her, he would look at her like, 'Don't say anything, because we're all armed,'" Keesee said.

She said a man who worked from April to December 2021 without pay complained to the operators of the site. The operators then gave each worker $300. As the man escaped, he was shot at and had his vehicle rammed. He later received death threats by cellphone.

"I don't think we can underestimate how dangerous it is for these people," Keesee said.

In 2021, a nearly dead Latino man was dumped at a gas station in Cave Junction. He died while being transported to a hospital. His death led to a massive marijuana raid that uncovered evidence of human trafficking and involuntary servitude, police said at the time.

Also in 2021, investigators found a Latino man who had been shot and buried in a shallow grave near an illegal marijuana grow in Josephine County.

"Due to the remoteness of these areas, how many more bodies are they going to find out there of people who've been murdered?" Keesee asked.

Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel said he stays awake at night worrying about the humanitarian issues and violence workers face. He said some workers brought into the area don't even know they're in the state of Oregon, much less the location of the grow site they're at if they have to call for help.

"These people working on illegal grows are victims, in my mind," he said.

Many of the grows are financially backed by drug trafficking organizations and international cartels. Their strategy for 2021 was to overwhelm law enforcement with the sheer number of grows, knowing some would get busted but others would produce lucrative crops to be sold in states where marijuana remains illegal, according to law enforcement.

Although law enforcement worked hard on marijuana busts, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office still had hundreds of complaints from impacted residents that it couldn't get to last year, said Jackson County Sheriff Nathan Sickler.

"People call and say, 'When are you going to help? I've got this going on next door to my property,'" he said.

The Rogue Valley is facing violence, gunfire, thefts, burglaries, fire hazards, water theft and negative impacts to residents' quality of life, Sickler said.

"We'd love to be able to rid our community of the illegal industry," he said.

This year, illegal growers have shifted their strategy toward smaller, scattered grows so a massive operation doesn't go down from one raid. Some grows have moved indoors. Growers may also be targeting other counties beyond southwest Oregon and reducing their presence here, the Jackson and Josephine county sheriffs said.

"We're optimistic we'll have less this year," Sickler said.

In December 2021, the Oregon Legislature recognized law enforcement agencies were overwhelmed and allocated $20 million in emergency money to hire more officers and step up enforcement. However, that funding has been delayed for months while the state government irons out bureaucratic wrinkles.

Southern Oregon legislators from both sides of the aisle, including State Sen. Jeff Golden, a Democrat from Jackson County, and Rep. Lily Morgan, a Republican from Josephine County, expressed frustration at the hold-up.

"We're trying to establish credible enforcement so these folks don't find us easy pickings anymore," Golden said.

In addition to the emergency funding, he said, the state needs to find a source of long-term, sustainable funding to attack illegal marijuana, which is harming the legal marijuana and hemp industries.

Oregon voters legalized recreational marijuana starting in 2015, although it remains illegal on the federal level.

Congress legalized hemp — marijuana's look-alike, non-intoxicating cousin — for the whole nation in 2018. That prompted a rush of people to start growing marijuana illegally in Oregon under the guise of hemp, which can be raised and sold with far fewer regulations.

Oregon taxes on the legal marijuana industry were supposed to pay for law enforcement to keep illegal operators in check, but Oregon voters approved Measure 110 in 2020. The measure essentially decriminalized user amounts of hard drugs such as heroin, meth and cocaine. It diverted hundreds of millions of dollars in marijuana tax revenue from law enforcement, schools and addiction treatment to support services for people facing addiction.

"Measure 110 scraped a lot of the marijuana tax money that was designed for enforcement," said State Rep. Kim Wallan, a Republican from Jackson County.

Meanwhile, the state citizens committee in charge of allocating Measure 110 grants to community organizations across the state is several months behind schedule this year. Many organizations that provide overdose antidote kits, housing with support services, peer mentors and other help are waiting for the final word on whether they will get funding.

State law blocks local governments from adopting their own taxes on legal marijuana beyond a 3% tax.

"We're unable to fund our own efforts locally," Sickler said.

The legal marijuana industry generally opposes higher taxes on their products. They note the legal industry is paying taxes and following a host of regulations, while illegal operators don't pay taxes on their black market sales and defy laws meant to protect workers, the environment and communities.

In 2021, law enforcement agencies in Jackson, Josephine, Douglas and Klamath counties found and destroyed marijuana with a black market value of $2.78 billion — dwarfing the nearly $1.2 billion in legal marijuana sales for the entire state, according to a Mail Tribune analysis.

They also seized cash, hundreds of guns and other drugs.

Under forfeiture laws, law enforcement agencies can use seized money for equipment and training, but not to pay for staff, Sickler said.

Reach Mail Tribune reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or valdous@rosebudmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @VickieAldous.