By Steve Pomper
The consequences for state, local, and federal law enforcement and residents affected by the federal government’s ignoring of immigration laws is so much darker than most people know. Most of the media doesn’t seem interested in reporting anything that goes against the established state narrative.
You may have heard a smattering of news about the drug cartels taking over California towns and establishing illegal marijuana grow farms. Law-abiding residents can no longer live normal lives as drug cartels take advantage of depleted law enforcement and of residents who feel helpless to fight this surge of criminality on their own.
Patriot Social reported, Jorge Ventura, of The Daily Caller, just released an investigative documentary called Cartelville USA. In it, he documents the drug cartels’ takeover of rural towns in Los Angeles County. Ventura reports, “We’ve already seen three or four communities in the Antelope Valley and in San Bernardino County that have been completely taken over by these cartels and pushing families away.”
All while the Newsom and Biden administrations do little to nothing about it.
And like an evil virus it’s spreading. Even further into the interior of the U.S. other communities are facing similar threats by drug cartels. As bad as the California problem is, at least that state shares a border with Mexico. Authorities might expect Mexican cartels to attempt to operate there, exploiting the inaction of state and federal governments.
But, now, there are myriad reports on similar occurrences in rural southern Oregon. The Epoch Times’ Scottie Barnes recently covered the ominous situation blighting California’s northern neighbor. And the cartels have added an element to the darkness motioned above: narco-slavery.
Barnes writes, “Seven years after Oregon legalized recreational marijuana, the market for cannabis is booming. But rather than propagate a legal agricultural sector that grows the state’s economy as intended, the industry has taken a dark turn in Southern Oregon.”
According to this investigation, drug traffickers from “nearly a dozen countries” realized they could open a legal hemp farm and then use it as a cover for illegally growing recreational marijuana. Local law enforcement in these small towns have “been defunded for decades” and are being overwhelmed.
The Oregon Health Authority says about fifty percent of the state’s hemp farms are “illegally growing marijuana.” About a quarter of the growers boldly refuse state inspectors access to their operations. Apparently, the ultra-left-wing Gov. Kate Brown administration isn’t interested in enforcing even more laws against yet another apparently protected class.
Brown became infamous for failing to support prosecuting an abundance of BLM and Antifa rioters in 2020 and into 2021 while condemning a handful of supposed “white supremacists.” She even blamed the brutal murder of a Trump supporter committed by an Antifa member on President Trump.
Barnes wrote Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel told him, “One of the best defensive backs in the NFL bought a 40-acre property here and immediately put an illegal marijuana grow on it.”
Sheriff Daniel says a grow operation can make almost $1 billion per year. He says there are hundreds of “illegal grows” in his county alone. About the cartels, the sheriff said, “Some people will do anything for that kind of money. Murder. Rape. Traffic human beings.”
Human beings that Sheriff Daniel calls “narco-slaves.” These mostly illegal immigrants are coerced workers brought north to Oregon and forced to toil on the illegal farms. Apparently, the cartels will transport people who’ve crossed the border illegally and force them to labor under constant threat they or their families will be killed.
This leaves these narco-slaves afraid to talk to authorities. And if local law enforcement is so overwhelmed they can’t protect and serve American citizens, they sure don’t have the resources to help illegal aliens.
The cartels abandon these narco-slaves once they’ve harvested a grow, leaving them to fend for themselves.
Another ironic consequence of leftist governments at all levels ignoring these illegal grow operations is environmental. Oregon state representative Lily Morgan, a Republican, said, “Illegal growers steal massive amounts of water and are depleting our water tables.”
She said a constituent told her for 25 years, the water level in her well had been at 35 feet. She told Morgan it’s dropped to 75 feet since a neighbor began a grow operation. The local water is also becoming contaminated with pesticides, which affect neighbors and other legitimate area farms, and it exposes narco-slaves to “high levels of toxins.”
As in California, the cartels are also buying up local houses and land, sometimes for twice the asking price, pricing locals out of the market. Sheriff Daniel calls this a “national security issue.” He says even though he’s partnering with federal law enforcement agencies, he believes U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland should do more.
But Garland’s apparently too busy targeting parents attending their school board meetings to effectively deal with narco-slave holders.
With the Biden administration refusing to enforce immigration law at the southern border, which is the wellspring of the cartels’ U.S. organized crime now occurring in California and Oregon, this is likely to get a whole lot worse for local law enforcement and their communities before it gets better.