"Chinese immigrant workers sue over forced labor at illegal marijuana operation on Navajo land" 28 September 2023

Chinese immigrant workers allege they were lured to northern New Mexico under false pretenses and forced to work 14 hours a day trimming marijuana on the Navajo Nation where cultivating the plant is illegal, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in state court.

Job advertisements for the operation in Shiprock promised $200 per day, housing and food in exchange for “gardening” and “flower cutting.” But when the workers arrived in New Mexico, the complaint says, their phones and car keys were taken away, they were barred from leaving and, in some instances, family members were separated.

In a statement Wednesday, lawyers for the 15 workers said their clients were treated like animals and commended their bravery for coming forward.

At least 19 rooms at a motel in nearby Farmington supported the operation, the complaint alleges. Workers were treated like prisoners at the motel, which was under watch by armed security guards, and like machines while toiling in the fields, according to the complaint...

Phillip Francisco, then-chief of police for the Navajo Nation, previously estimated there were 1,000 people working for the operation, mostly foreign workers brought to New Mexico from Los Angeles...

Navajo residents described seeing the workers sleeping in the fields and ditches, “shivering through the night,” the lawsuit states. One worker said he slept on the floors of greenhouses and was never paid any of the roughly $12,000 in wages he was promised...

The lawsuit names as defendants Navajo businessman Dineh Benally and Irving Lin, a Taiwanese entrepreneur based in Los Angeles...The lawsuit claims that Benally and Lin intentionally targeted Chinese immigrants in California who were out of work in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

...In late 2020, the Navajo Nation Department of Justice sued Benally, leading to a court order halting the operation that the lawsuit says Benally and his associates ignored. Benally didn’t respond to phone and emailed requests for comment.

Lin couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Wednesday... But in a March 2021 affidavit detailed in the lawsuit, Lin stated there was “no violence and human trafficking” and no “human rights” violated by the farming operation.