Household of Chinese language Immigrant Who Died Weeks Into Work on Marijuana Farm Needs Solutions — ProPublica

On the morning of April 12, the farmworker awakened struggling to breathe and delirious with fever.

Jiaai Zeng had spent the previous month working nonstop at a marijuana farm in Oklahoma run by fellow Chinese language immigrants. The job was brutal, the 57-year-old had instructed family members in New York. He stated his bosses made him labor as much as 15 hours a day within the blast-furnace warmth of a greenhouse. He was feeling terrible even after a go to to the physician, so he deliberate to return to New York that night for medical remedy.

At 9:38 a.m., Zeng despatched an audio message to a cousin in Manhattan’s Chinatown. In an agonized whisper, he requested her to purchase a bag of oranges for when he arrived.

“I don’t need to eat something,” he stated, talking a dialect of Fujian province. “I simply need to check out oranges and see if I’ll have an urge for food.”

About an hour later, Zeng was unconscious and had no pulse when three individuals from the farm drove him to a close-by hospital. They dropped him off and left in a rush whereas docs have been attempting to revive him, in accordance with a hospital report.

By 11:05 a.m., Zeng was useless.

“This loss of life just isn’t regular,” stated his nephew, Westin Zeng, in an interview with ProPublica and The Frontier. “He lives there for somewhat bit over 30 days: from a wholesome individual to a useless individual. It doesn’t make sense to me. … In my thoughts, there’s a logical hyperlink from his work to his sickness, and from his sickness to how they deal with that, and a hyperlink to his loss of life.”

The farmworker’s story provides a glimpse into the cruel and infrequently abusive circumstances endured by the tens of hundreds of Chinese language immigrants who’ve quietly change into the spine of many U.S. marijuana operations.

“It is among the most deplorable components of what we see on this trade,” stated Donnie Anderson, the director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, who met with Zeng’s family members and ordered an investigation.

Hashish farms have boomed in states which have handed medical and leisure marijuana legal guidelines. However when voters in Oklahoma accredited a regulation permitting the cultivation of medical marijuana in 2018, legislators didn’t develop corresponding laws to guard workers. Oklahoma’s traditionally weak labor enforcement system leaves the safety of employees largely to the federal authorities. And the U.S. Division of Labor has restricted oversight as a result of marijuana is unlawful on the nationwide stage.

Because of this, employees who’re already remoted by language and tradition have discovered themselves largely on the mercy of their employers, typically criminals who depend on Chinese language immigrant labor. As ProPublica and The Frontier have reported, Chinese language mafias — some with suspected ties to the Chinese language authorities — have taken benefit of state-level legalization to dominate a nationwide black marketplace for marijuana.

How Chinese language Organized Crime Is Dominating America’s Unlawful Marijuana Market

Throughout raids, inspections and investigations at greater than a thousand farms over the previous 5 years, Oklahoma regulation enforcement officers, hearth marshals, federal labor inspectors and different officers have encountered a litany of abuses: bosses threaten and beat employees, sexually assault them, steal their wages, confiscate their IDs, limit their actions and drive them to work in harmful warmth with noxious chemical compounds and pesticides. Wrongdoing is rampant at many Chinese language-owned farms, the place immigrants are sometimes so terrified of their employers and the authorities that they don’t cooperate with investigations, in accordance with regulation enforcement officers, courtroom instances, human rights advocates and employees.

The mistreatment and squalid circumstances are the hallmarks of human trafficking, stated Craig Williams, the chief agent of the marijuana and human trafficking sections of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.

“It’s laborious to convey what it’s like till you’re standing there, trying on the individuals, trying on the atmosphere, smelling the atmosphere, seeing what they’re dwelling in,” Williams stated. “Your coronary heart goes out to them like, ‘That is simply incorrect.’”

Whereas issues are significantly unhealthy in Oklahoma, research and media experiences have detailed comparable dangers nationwide to laborers, a lot of them current arrivals who crossed the Mexican border illegally. Exploitation of Chinese language immigrants pervades the marijuana underworld from California to New Mexico to Maine, in accordance with interviews and courtroom instances.

And even abroad, authorities have discovered patterns of mistreatment at Chinese language-run marijuana websites from Chile to Eire.

“These are individuals dwelling in a state of affairs of semi-slavery,” stated a police official in Spain, a middle of unlawful marijuana cultivation in Europe, who spoke on the situation of anonymity for security causes. “They’re locked up 24 hours a day. They don’t know what nation they dwell in. They don’t have contact with the surface world.”

Throughout raids in 2021 on hashish plantations hidden in warehouses close to Barcelona, Spain, police freed 10 immigrants from Fujian whom gangsters had pressured to work to repay smuggling money owed of as much as $35,000. The drug traffickers locked the employees within the soiled, windowless buildings, making them sleep on mattresses on the ground. A few of the victims spent as much as a yr in captivity, police stated.

“Everybody has a special story, however the backside line is that they haven’t escaped the darkness of China,” stated Ju Ma, a Chinese language human rights advocate who runs a migrant shelter in New York that has aided marijuana employees.

Within the Zeng case, the federal Occupational Security and Well being Administration and the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics are investigating. The Workplace of the Chief Medical Examiner not too long ago concluded that the reason for the farmworker’s loss of life was pneumonia.

“They’re making a lot cash within the marijuana trade, however they’re treating the employees like slaves,” Westin Zeng stated. “I need to discover out the whole lot that occurred and get justice for my household.”

The farm’s homeowners haven’t been sanctioned or charged with a criminal offense in relation to the case. Jeffrey Field, a lawyer for certainly one of them, rejected the Zeng household’s allegations that neglect and harsh working circumstances performed roles within the farmworker’s loss of life.

Official information and experiences on labor within the marijuana trade are sparse, and Chinese language employees hardly ever discuss their experiences. To report this story, ProPublica and The Frontier interviewed a number of dozen present and former regulation enforcement officers in the US and abroad, different authorities officers, farmworkers, human rights advocates, legal professionals and others. Reporters additionally reviewed courtroom paperwork, medical recordsdata, authorities experiences and social media posts in English, Chinese language and Spanish.

The reporting reveals a saga of despair that is still largely out of sight for the U.S. public. Zeng’s case is uncommon as a result of his household has spoken out. Many Chinese language immigrants enter the nation’s marijuana trade hoping to plant the seeds of recent lives, however they find yourself struggling in silence.

“In the event that they go lacking, nobody’s going to report something,” Williams stated. “I sincerely marvel how many individuals are buried on unlawful marijuana grows.”

The Journey

Zeng was born in a village in Yongtai County, Fujian. His nephew remembers him departing at daybreak to domesticate rice and plum timber, and returning after darkish.

“If individuals have been carrying two baskets of stuff, he carried 4,” stated Westin Zeng, now a 32-year-old enterprise advisor in New York.

A father of two, Zeng additionally did itinerant guide labor in Shanghai and different cities to assist his household, together with his father and a grandson who’re each disabled. In 2021, he transformed to Christianity (his U.S. family members are Christians), which brought about police in his hometown to harass him, in accordance with an account he later wrote for a U.S. immigration courtroom. On the similar time, the pandemic was worsening China’s financial woes and the hardships of its working individuals.

Zeng determined to depart. His U.S. family members lent him about $65,000 for the smuggler’s payment. The cash included a payoff to expedite issuance of a passport by Chinese language officers in Fujian, a coastal province whose longtime smuggling underworld intertwines with official corruption. Zeng traveled by way of Bolivia and Mexico, climbing the border fence into San Diego in December 2022. After Border Patrol brokers arrested him, he requested political asylum and was launched.

He arrived throughout a multiyear surge of immigration from China. Within the first eight months of the 2024 fiscal yr, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended round 31,000 Chinese language nationals illegally crossing the southwest border. That’s over 15 instances greater than your complete 2019 fiscal yr.

Some Chinese language border-crossers discover work in marijuana operations after they arrive. Others are smuggled throughout the globe particularly to work within the hashish trade.

A former senior Drug Enforcement Administration official stated the company has discovered about these clandestine labor pipelines from informants and a jailed high-level human trafficker and cash launderer.

“The phrase goes out: We want extra manpower for all these marijuana farms,” stated Christopher Urben, who’s now a managing director on the world investigations agency Nardello & Co. “The identical networks are concerned in weed, cash laundering and human smuggling.”

Blackwell

When Zeng reached New York in early 2023, he gave thanks at a Fujianese church in Chinatown and have become an everyday worshipper.

“He was stunned how a lot individuals have been prepared to assist him,” Westin Zeng stated. “He was actually touched. He instructed my father it’s completely totally different right here.”

Zeng first labored at a restaurant after which, on the suggestion of a cousin employed within the marijuana trade in Oklahoma, spent a month final summer time working at a marijuana farm there. He had no complaints about that have, his household stated. He saved cash to ship to household in China and to repay money owed incurred by his abroad journey.

Again in New York, Zeng, who had simply gotten Medicaid insurance coverage protection, underwent a medical checkup in early March that didn’t discover severe illnesses, in accordance with the physician who examined him, medical paperwork and his household.

On March 7, Zeng returned to Oklahoma to work at a farm within the small city of Blackwell, close to the Kansas state line. Pictures and public information present the 65-acre lot had six greenhouses and 9 indoor develop homes and, in accordance with Zeng’s household, the farm employed about 13 employees. The metallic fence displayed indicators depicting a pistol above the warning “Lawful Hid Carry Permitted on Premises.”

Zeng earned about $4,500 a month for trimming vegetation, spreading fertilizer and doing pest management, his household stated. His shift started at 7 a.m. and lasted as late as 10 p.m., with no days off. He slept in a cubicle in a partitioned room within the red-roofed important home.

In calls to family members, Zeng sounded sad. Though his bosses and associates have been additionally Fujianese, they mistreated him as a result of they have been from one other county with a special dialect, he instructed his family members. The meals have been meager, employees have been quitting due to the extreme tempo and the plastic-covered, dome-shaped greenhouses have been infernally scorching, he instructed them.

“He was complaining to my aunt that he needed to work virtually bare as a result of it was too scorching in there,” Westin Zeng stated. “The one method to quiet down was to spray himself with water.”

Investigators have documented warmth reaching over 120 levels at some farms, Williams stated. Throughout raids, brokers routinely minimize the perimeters out of the greenhouses to dissipate the warmth and fumes from chemical compounds. Brokers put on oxygen screens as a result of farmers pump in CO2 to reinforce the expansion of vegetation, a apply that depletes oxygen ranges with out brokers, or laborers, realizing it.

“I fear about our brokers’ well being on a regular basis,” Williams stated. “And people employees reside in it.”

Authorities and educational research have discovered that warmth and humidity within the greenhouses can promote bacterial progress and trigger warmth stress, and that chemical compounds, gasses and different substances at marijuana farms can lead to illnesses starting from allergy symptoms to deadly bronchial asthma. Different analysis reveals that prolonged time in extra warmth could cause human organs to close down.

Fires and explosions are one other hazard. And lots of farmers use poisonous pesticides smuggled from China or throughout the Mexican border that have made employees sick in California, officers stated.

The extent of such hazards on the Blackwell farm just isn’t clear. Zeng instructed his household that he typically wore a masks due to the scent of chemical compounds and marijuana, his family members stated.

Field, the lawyer representing an proprietor of the farm, disputed the household’s allegations about excessive warmth and different circumstances on the farm.

Round April 9, Zeng fell sick. Somebody from the farm took him to a health care provider in Oklahoma Metropolis on April 10. The physician recognized cystitis and a urinary tract an infection — circumstances that analysis reveals might be exacerbated by warmth stress — and prescribed an antibiotic, in accordance with medical information and the family members. (The physician declined a request for remark.)

That evening, Zeng talked to his household about flying again to New York, the place his insurance coverage would assist cowl additional remedy.

“I need to give it a number of days, wait till I get higher, then depart,” he stated in an audio message.

Regardless of the antibiotic, his situation deteriorated. His bosses purchased him a airplane ticket to New York for the afternoon of April 12, his household stated. That morning, he recorded the audio message to his cousin.

“You’ll be able to hear he was dying,” Westin Zeng stated.

At 10:35 a.m., an hour after Zeng despatched the message, a minivan pulled as much as the emergency room at Stillwater Medical Heart-Blackwell. Nurses discovered Zeng slumped unconscious wrapped in a blanket. They started CPR, put him on a stretcher and rushed him inside, in accordance with the hospital report.

The girl and two males who introduced him from the farm claimed they didn’t communicate English and offered little data “apart from the affected person’s date of delivery and his title,” the report says.

Utilizing a Mandarin-speaking telephone interpreter, the nurses received a number of solutions from the girl, who recognized herself solely as Stella. She “was not very forthcoming” and requested a number of instances when she might depart, the report says. She denied figuring out Zeng however defined that he labored at a marijuana farm, had been sick two or three days and had seen a health care provider, the report says.

Stella “left with the opposite two males,” the report says. “CPR continued.”

Docs pronounced Zeng useless a half hour after his arrival. Exams revealed he had sepsis and pneumonia, the report says. A hospital spokesperson declined to remark.

“Promoting Hope”

Zeng died at a time when Oklahoma is confronting the darkish aspect of its rush into the marijuana frontier.

In 2018, voters handed the poll petition that legalized medical marijuana with 56% of the vote. The petition written by residents included nearly no laws. The next yr, the state Legislature accredited a number of laws defending shopper entry to medical marijuana, but it surely didn’t tackle the well being and security of the marijuana employees.

On the peak of the billion-dollar marijuana increase in 2022, the state had virtually 10,000 hashish farms, which have an estimated common workforce of 15 to twenty workers per website. Though a crackdown on black market marijuana trafficking has minimize the variety of farms, authorities nonetheless come throughout abusive, squalid and unsafe workplaces.

Issues are endemic at Chinese language-owned farms engaged in illicit exercise, officers stated. Staff typically inform investigators their bosses promised to pay them at harvest, then claimed the harvest wasn’t large enough. Homeowners typically supply new hires an eventual minimize of the income, and even entice them to speculate hard-won financial savings within the ventures, then rip them off, in accordance with regulation enforcement officers and employees.

“We see promised pay that hasn’t been delivered on very regularly now,” Williams stated. “They suppose they only need to work in a very unhealthy atmosphere for some time and suppose it’s going to repay on the finish. They don’t understand they’re engaged on an unlawful develop. And that the work they’ve finished, they’re by no means going to receives a commission for anyway. To some extent, they’re promoting hope.”

In a uncommon office enforcement case in 2021, the Oklahoma Division of Labor judged that 4 Chinese language workers have been owed a mixed whole of almost $57,000 in unpaid wages and damages after investigators discovered they weren’t paid for months of intense bodily labor at a marijuana farm in southern Oklahoma.

“We have been overworked,” stated Yulin Zheng via an interpreter in an interview with ProPublica and The Frontier. Almost 50 workers labored as much as 14 hours a day, no days off, and lived in trailers with out air-con, she stated.

Zheng and her husband, Chang Qin Jiang, each of their late 60s, took jobs in Oklahoma after somebody instructed them hashish was a profitable trade. They have been every paid $4,000 in money the primary month. However the subsequent month, a boss instructed them he didn’t have the cash, in accordance with screenshots of textual content messages they included in a grievance to the Labor Division.

“I’ll pay the wage in a number of days, most likely subsequent week,” he stated in a textual content message. “Consider me!”

The money by no means got here. Months later, he instructed them they may earn a living in the event that they purchased one of many farm’s greenhouses to develop and promote marijuana themselves, the couple stated.

“It was like a rooster recreation,” Zheng stated. “They have been attempting to maintain as a lot cash as attainable.”

The employer finally deserted the farm, leaving many employees with out meals or transportation, in accordance with the couple and courtroom paperwork. The couple’s son in California drove to Oklahoma and helped them file the profitable declare.

Later, an proprietor of the farm tried to use for chapter, however a courtroom discovered she had not disclosed a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} in revenue from marijuana ventures, courtroom paperwork say. Public information additionally present that the telephone quantity for the farm belongs to the Chinese language proprietor of a furnishings retailer in Oklahoma Metropolis that the FBI raided final yr in an investigation that led to a few different individuals being convicted. Investigators discovered that the shop was getting used as a entrance for a prison community that trafficked marijuana to the East Coast utilizing pretend Amazon supply automobiles.

Staff at different farms have recounted their struggles in Chinese language-language weblog posts. In 2021, an electrician at a farm close to Maramec, Oklahoma, alleged that his employer threatened to “have our legs damaged” when he and his spouse requested for months of wages they have been by no means paid. One other girl on the similar farm described how a boss “grabbed an iron bar and a gun” to menace her throughout a confrontation over unpaid wage. Courtroom paperwork present the farm was later raided and the proprietor convicted on drug expenses.

Scams are frequent in different states as nicely, in accordance with interviews and courtroom recordsdata.

“What we see is Chinese language nationals who’re both right here legally … or have been smuggled in throughout the Mexican border and are pressured into labor, or extra typically tricked into labor,” stated Kevin McInerney, a commander on the California Division of Hashish Management.

Brokers in Southern California are investigating the current case of a lady who invested $10,000 to work at a marijuana farm in alternate for a small month-to-month wage and an eventual minimize of the income. After she toiled in terrible circumstances, the employers refused to pay her first month’s wage. She stopped working in protest, in order that they drove her out into the desert and deserted her at a gasoline station, officers stated.

Pervasive criminality makes the marijuana enterprise “inherently extra violent” than different industries, stated Whitney Anderson, who directs The Dragonfly Dwelling, a shelter for victims of human trafficking in Oklahoma Metropolis.

Staff in Oklahoma have suffered beatings and even died in robberies and shootings. In a single case, an worker instructed police her boss grabbed her by the hair, fired photographs close to her head and threatened to kill her and her daughter, in accordance with courtroom paperwork.

Intercourse crimes are additionally a hazard. A 42-year-old former supervisor at a hashish farm in Noble County is going through expenses of rape and sexual battery after he allegedly assaulted an worker in her sleeping quarters in 2022, courtroom paperwork say. He had beforehand tried to assault her at work by slipping a dose of ketamine into her consuming water to incapacitate her, however a co-worker intervened, the paperwork say. The previous supervisor has pleaded not responsible and is awaiting trial.

“I’m so scared [he] will take revenge on me, my daughter, or household,” the girl wrote in a request for a protecting order. “I’ve to dwell in concern each single day.”

And in one other dramatic incident in 2021, a Chinese language employee in Garvin County escaped from a marijuana farm and ran to a close-by home, the place he banged on the door screaming for assist. A person and a lady chased him down and tried to tug him again throughout the highway, in accordance with 911 name transcripts, courtroom information and interviews.

“That they had a giant previous combat in my entrance yard,” Diann Skinner, who lives in the home, stated in an interview. “They’d sort out him, he’d stand up and take off they usually’d sort out him once more.”

Frightened neighbors and passing drivers referred to as police, who arrived because the assailants wrestled with the escaped employee. The 37-year-old sufferer instructed officers that the girl and two males had held him towards his will for 3 months and compelled him to work. He was “extraordinarily scared” of his captors and “believed they might attempt to kill him,” a police report stated.

Police discovered 1,500 kilos of unlawful marijuana, $32,000 in money and two pistols within the run-down property, which served as a processing depot for Chinese language-owned farms concerned in illicit trafficking, in accordance with courtroom paperwork and interviews.

Prosecutors filed expenses of kidnapping and drug trafficking towards the suspects. However the sufferer shortly left the state, making it not possible to pursue the kidnapping cost. The 2 males have been convicted of the drug offenses and sentenced to 2 years in jail. The costs towards the girl have been dropped.

Fifty Thousand {Dollars}

The day after Zeng’s loss of life, his distraught nephew hurried to Oklahoma Metropolis and met with a person and 4 girls from the farm. That they had a tense dialog within the foyer of an condominium constructing, he stated.

“They stated, ‘We did the whole lot proper,’” Westin Zeng stated. “The perspective of those individuals to me was, the entire tone of the dialog was, ‘It was your uncle’s fault.’”

The group didn’t give their names and provided to pay $50,000 if the household stored silent, Westin alleges. He stated he refused.

ProPublica and The Frontier used images, social media, public information and different sources to establish the proprietor of the farm, Xiuna Chen. Westin Zeng acknowledged her as one of many individuals on the assembly.

Chen has not been charged with any crime. However public information present that her Blackwell farm has a number of ties to a different farm that was not too long ago raided by the Oklahoma Organized Crime Job Pressure, which led to 6 indictments. The defendants have pleaded not responsible.

Chen referred reporters to Field, her lawyer, who accused the useless employee’s household of attempting to “shake down” his consumer “for a ton of cash.”

One other girl that Westin Zeng acknowledged from the assembly is Zhixin Liu, who on social media goes by Stella — the title given by the girl who introduced Jiaai Zeng to the hospital. Liu’s telephone is on the marijuana license for the Blackwell farm, and he or she is recognized as its proprietor on a report by firefighters who responded to a hearth there in April.

In 2022, Liu established a company with Zenith Prime LLC, an Oklahoma Metropolis agency that has been raided for allegedly establishing unlawful marijuana ventures, public information present. She listed her tackle as a home that belongs to a suspected proprietor of Zenith Prime, in accordance with public information and courtroom paperwork. The homeowners of the agency haven’t been charged, although brokers have executed search warrants and initiated cash forfeiture actions towards them which are awaiting trial.

Liu declined requests for remark.

Whereas in Oklahoma, Westin Zeng met with the state anti-drug director and an official at OSHA. Officers at each businesses instructed ProPublica and The Frontier that they’re investigating the farmworker’s loss of life and the Blackwell farm.

The household’s engagement with authorities is uncommon. Many employees who really feel they’ve been victims of wrongdoing don’t have contacts within the U.S. or their family members are fearful and communicate little English, officers stated.

Final yr, the state narcotics bureau succeeded in constructing a human trafficking prosecution in a grim case: The accused ringleaders pressured girls to work as prostitutes at a brothel catering to homeowners and managers of Chinese language-owned marijuana farms, flying the ladies to Oklahoma Metropolis from New York, in accordance with courtroom paperwork.

Typically, although, the reluctance and elusiveness of victims discourage authorities from submitting expenses of human trafficking or office abuses. They focus as an alternative on drug-related offenses by the homeowners.

The conflict between state and federal legal guidelines mixed with weak regulation make employees in Oklahoma particularly susceptible.

Oklahoma leaves regulation of office security to OSHA, however the company doesn’t proactively monitor marijuana worksites in Oklahoma, and it solely investigates in excessive instances comparable to job-related accidents or deaths, officers stated. As a result of marijuana stays unlawful on the federal stage, OSHA has not developed particular office security laws for the hashish trade, and depends totally on the company’s normal responsibility clause, which covers all employers, for enforcement.

In contrast, in California, which has its personal state-level office security company, a state process drive requires homeowners of marijuana operations to take a coaching course and create a written damage and sickness program. Even homeowners of unlawful rising websites are topic to such guidelines, a spokesperson for the California Division of Industrial Relations stated.

Oklahoma leaders say they’re attempting laborious to beat a bureaucratic limbo. The state labor commissioner, Leslie Osborn, stated in an interview that the heads of businesses met final yr “to essentially knock out who’s chargeable for what. And there’s not a variety of readability.”

“We let this flourish like a black market,” Osborn stated, “and now we’re form of behind the eight ball.”