This story and photo gallery was originally published by Searchlight New Mexico and is published here as part of an ongoing collaboration with Rolling Stone.
A coalition of 20 federal, state and tribal law enforcement entities descended on a network of Shiprock farms on Monday, capping a months-long investigation into illegal marijuana cultivation and possible labor trafficking on the Navajo Nation.
Throughout the day, teams of law enforcement officers — including agents from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency — removed marijuana plants by the thousands, loading them onto dump trucks and burying them in large pits.
Law enforcement will not yet comment on the volume, but San Juan County Sheriff Shane Ferrari described the seizure as an amount that will “knock you back in your chair.” Navajo Nation police had previously reported that only five of 36 cannabis farms remained in operation; if true, the enormous piles of plants confiscated this week would be only a fraction of what was growing a few months ago.
The action came on the heels of a September 23rd investigation by Searchlight New Mexico revealing that a network of farms on Navajo land, operating under the guise of hemp cultivation, were covertly growing high-end black-market marijuana. The cannabis farms, overseen by local Navajo Farm Board President Dineh Benally, employed more than 1,000 low-income Chinese immigrant workers and investors from California and New York — many of whom were given fraudulent cannabis cultivation licenses and contracts portraying the farms as legal entities.
Workers included Navajo children as young as 10, the Searchlight investigation revealed. That finding, along with reports of Asian laborers attempting to flee the farms, prompted the U.S. State Department’s human trafficking unit and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich to initiate separate investigations.
After a tribal court issued a temporary restraining order on Sept. 18, Navajo Nation Police Chief Phillip Francisco told Searchlight his officers had seized “several thousand pounds of marijuana” — but that a handful of farms continued cultivating cannabis in defiance of the order.
The marijuana farms have created simmering tensions throughout the community of Shiprock. Incensed at the destruction of farmland traditionally used to grow corn, a staple food crop that is integral to Navajo ceremonies, corn farmers and other residents have begun carrying weapons. Protesters have marched on more than a dozen occasions, demanding that law enforcement shut down the cannabis farms and, on at least one occasion, setting fire to several greenhouses.
During the police raid yesterday, jubilant neighbors brought pizza to Navajo officers who assisted in the operations.
In a press release, the FBI said agents had “executed federal search warrants in the area of Shiprock, N.M., on the Navajo Nation,” but declined to give further details. Frank Fisher, spokesman for the FBI’s Albuquerque office, told Searchlight he could not yet comment on whether arrest warrants would be issued for Dineh Benally or other organizers of the marijuana farms.