How China is Using Illegal Marijuana to Build a Criminal Network Across America
House Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability
2025-09-18
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Source: Congress.gov
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M
Mr. Christopher Urben
Committee on Homeland Security Oversight Investigations Accountability under the broader Homeland Security Committee will come to order. The purpose of today's hearing is to examine how China is using illegal marijuana to build a criminal network across America. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare the committee in recess at any point. I now recognize myself for an opening statement. Today, the Oversight Investigations Accountability Committee is holding this hearing on how the use of illegal marijuana has tied into the criminal network tracing to China's impact in the United States. First, for order of business and announcement, the gentleman from Texas, Al Green, will, from this point forward, be serving on the Oversight Investigations and Accountability Subcommittee for the remainder of the 119th Congress, and we look forward to working with him. We are here today to talk about an important issue, significant national security implications. This issue has been prevalent not just in Oklahoma, my home state, but in many other states, Maine, California, and all across our homeland. Let's paint the picture together. A group of Chinese nationals affiliated with foreign criminal organization crosses the southern border, makes their way into rural Oklahoma. With them are workers who have been lured under the false promise of good jobs in the United States. Once in Oklahoma, these Chinese nationals approach a local resident with an offer they cannot refuse. They offer the resident several hundreds of thousands of dollars, purchasing, using their time, their identity, to purchase a nearby tract of land. In return, the resident gets to keep a share of the money with no questions asked. The deal is quick and it's simple. In a matter of days, this newly purchased land becomes the site of a large scale illegal marijuana grow operation. The workers find themselves forced to work 14-hour days under the watch of armed guards, all while being confined to small living quarters, minimal running water, or air conditioning.
The smell of toxic fumes, fumigation from pesticides that are lit on fire that we know have... caused major health consequences, banned in this country, are utilized for these grow operations. Hundreds of pounds of illegal contaminated marijuana is then produced, ends up in the hands of people all over the United States, from Oklahoma to New York. This is just one example of how Chinese grow operations come to operation in communities all across the country. Oklahoma has had thousands of these operations activate at one time. Sadly, as we learned today, this is only scratching the surface of what these Chinese affiliated criminal groups are doing. Many Chinese illegal operations service fronts for a wider criminal enterprise, including human and drug trafficking, prostitutions, weapons smuggling, and money laundering. And while the example I highlighted takes place in our home state of Oklahoma, similar patterns are repeated in other states like Maine, Massachusetts, California. In fact, there are thousands of these grow operations dispersed through our entire country, including tribal lands and national parks. a really excellent panel of expert witnesses before us today who are gonna walk us through this issue and how it affects the Homeland Security posture. Specifically, I'd like to focus our conversation on the serious crimes taking place inside of these illegal growth sites, as well as how Chinese transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, many with directly ties to the Chinese Communist Party, are setting up these sites all across the U.S. as they expand an underground criminal network in our backyard. We're holding this hearing today because we've enabled these foreign organizations with potential links to the CCP to build up a sophisticated network throughout the United States which facilitates a wide range of other criminal activity and presents a national security threat. This is a convergence of organized crime
human drug trafficking, public health risks, all operating at scale and sophistication, crossing state, national lines beyond the normal capabilities of state and local law enforcement to combat. These agencies need the help of federal law enforcement to unravel these criminal networks. In fact, some of the foreign nationals running these grow operations are more heavily armed than local law enforcement. One of my field reps in Oklahoma heard from a journeyman electrician who was hired to do some work on a rural property. When he arrived at the site, he found what appeared to be a large foreign-run marijuana grow house, and he personally observed an armory of dozens of assault rifles and ammunition crates. This network must be uncovered and eliminated from our homeland. And it's really that simple. The potential threat that come from having fully operational criminal network associated with top foreign adversary on our soil is too great to ignore. I look forward to an informative and productive discussion. I now turn it over to ranking member Thanedar for his opening remarks.
Good morning and thank you, Chairman. And good morning to all of our witnesses here. I want to welcome my colleague, Congressman Al Green from Texas on this committee and look forward to his contribution to our proceedings here. Now, if you take a stroll through DC's neighborhoods, you're likely to encounter the National Guard planting flowers or picking up trash, and federal agents making traffic stops.
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