Ari Greenwald, owner of an Albuquerque-based cannabis company, said he had to refinance a rolling machine earlier this year after 15 pounds of expected product was confiscated by federal agents at a checkpoint in Southern New Mexico.
“It basically took a week out of production for us, and we had no way of making the month,” said Greenwald, the owner of Impact Farms LLC, noting this brought financial losses to the tune of $250,000.
Eight licensed marijuana operations in New Mexico filed a lawsuit in federal court last week against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the latest development as federal agents have continued to detain industry employees and confiscate state-legal marijuana.
In the suit, state-authorized cannabis businesses cite an “ongoing pattern” of seizures by federal agents at highway checkpoints in New Mexico, resulting in the loss of revenue totaling more than $1 million for the companies.
While the Land of Enchantment legalized recreational cannabis in 2022, marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug at the federal level.
“Really, customs and Border Patrol should be focused on more important things like fentanyl and immigration issues,” Greenwald said. “They really don’t need to be messing with state-legal weed with paperwork.”
The Governor’s Office said earlier this year Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas border states that have legalized cannabis appear to be facing greater scrutiny by U.S. Customs and Border Protection than nonborder states where cannabis is also legal.
“In the most recent seizures, [Customs and Border Protection] has become increasingly aggressive, seizing not only the state-legal cannabis products, but also the vehicles used in the Plaintiffs’ state-legal businesses to transport the state-legal cannabis products to its state-legal customers and business partners and detaining … employees,” states the lawsuit, filed Oct. 22 in the U.S. District Court in New Mexico.
An employee of Royal Cannabis, based south of Las Cruces, was transporting $5,900 of product in August in a white Audi when she was stopped by federal agents at an Alamogordo checkpoint, then detained in a holding cell for several hours under “inhumane conditions,” according to the lawsuit.
Customs and Border Protection has not returned the state-legal products to Royal Cannabis, which has a farm in Berino, about 10 miles south of Las Cruces near Border Patrol checkpoints, as well as a retail store in Las Cruces, said Tony Miller, the company’s owner.
“It’s still something we have to deal with on a daily basis,” Miller said. “The confiscating of money or product is obviously never fun. The product that they took, that’s a total loss because there is no communication with them about retrieving it or getting it back.”
He added an employee of Royal Cannabis has been “basically harassed” during a seizure and has been told “they were putting them on an international drug traffickers list.” Eventually, he said, the employee was let go and not arrested.
The federal government describes U.S. Customs and Border Protection as the nation’s first line of defense in preventing the illegal importation of narcotics, including marijuana.
“Although medical and recreational marijuana may be legal in some U.S. states and Canada, the sale, possession, production and distribution of marijuana or the facilitation of the aforementioned remain illegal under U.S. federal law, given the classification of marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance,” a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman wrote in an email to The New Mexican earlier this year.
The department did not respond to an requesting comment Monday.
Matt Kennicott, the owner of a company in Socorro called High Maintenance, said “quite frankly, they are stealing our product from us.”
Cannabis providers in New Mexico have reported seizures at border checkpoints along Interstate 25, Interstate 10 and U.S. 70 since the state Cannabis Control Division created an online questionnaire for reporting purposes. The majority have occurred on I-25.
“They keep saying, ‘It’s their directive. It’s their directive.’ But honestly, what’s happening is there is probably some midlevel bureaucratic employee in the El Paso [U.S Department of Homeland Security] office that says, ‘This is what we have to do,’” Kennicott said.
He added, “It seems to be the Border Patrol just acting under their own authority.”
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich sent a letter in May urging Mayorkas to have Customs and Border Protection refrain from seizing state law-compliant shipments of cannabis at checkpoints in New Mexico and to route such resources toward fentanyl-focused operations instead.
“Stopping the flow of illicit fentanyl into our country should be the Department of Homeland Security’s focus at these checkpoints, not seizing cannabis that’s being transported in compliance with state law,” Heinrich said in a statement Monday.
The lawsuit alleges multiple instances in which federal agents confiscated state-legal products, claiming Super Farm LLC, based in La Mesa, had product with a total retail value of over $55,000 confiscated — bulk cannabis flowers, hash rosin concentrates and vape pens.
“This kind of escalation is appropriate,” Ben Lewinger, executive director of the New Mexico Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, said of the lawsuit. “Because there has been complete and utter disregard from the [federal department] for the right of people involved in the regulated cannabis industry” in the state.
Kennicott noted this also affects Northern New Mexico cannabis retailers who order shipments from down south, which may not arrive if they are confiscated near the border.
“It’s a big problem. Moving product from down south to up north has gotten very, very difficult,” Kennicott said.
H/T: www.taosnews.com
