California’s largest cannabis cultivation company is still reeling months after the Donald Trump administration conducted a deadly immigration raid on its facilities. Glass House Brands reported Wednesday that the July raid cost it over $26 million in lost revenue and reduced its quarterly harvest by over 100,000 pounds of dried cannabis.
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CEO Kyle Kazan said on a Wednesday earnings call that the previous quarter was “the company’s most difficult to date,” referencing the federal operation on July 10, which ended with hundreds of workers arrested and one person dead after they fell from a greenhouse roof. The Department of Homeland Security said it found 14 “children” working at the facility, which would be a violation of state law. California’s cannabis regulator separately launched an investigation into underage labor violations.
The company has denied knowingly violating any labor laws, and there have been no state or federal charges against Glass House or its executives.
Glass House owns a massive complex of greenhouses — the company says it’s the largest cannabis cultivator in the world — and has staked its future on growing incredible amounts of cannabis at the lowest costs possible. The raid interrupted production after the company was forced to rehire its entire farming staff, yet Kazan promised that the raid’s effects would be only “transitory.”
“We are emerging as a better and even more durable company for having faced it,” he said.
The company’s stock price appears to reflect this optimistic view. After falling 30 percent in the weeks following the raid, the stock is now trading at a higher price than it was in July, with a market valuation over $540 million as of Thursday morning.
The company is mounting this comeback without helping any of the workers who were arrested and subsequently deported, according to Hazel Davalos, co-executive director of CAUSE, a Central Coast immigrant rights organization. Glass House originally promised to help coordinate legal assistance for workers, but Davalos said in an email to SFGATE that “we haven’t seen any further action or meaningful outreach” from the company.
“To date, we’re aware of four workers who have filed wage theft claims in the aftermath, and an additional 30 workers who were too afraid to come forward with claims out of fear of retaliation,” Davalos said. “That reality speaks volumes about the company’s values and how it has responded to what was, at the time, the largest workplace immigration raid in California.”
Glass House did not respond to multiple SFGATE requests for comment or to a list of questions for this story.
Federal agents targeted Glass House Brands by striking two of its facilities on July 10, mounting armed convoys roughly 30 miles apart in both Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. There were protests at both farms, but the Camarillo raid turned chaotic after hundreds of officers descended on the 165-acre complex.
A protest in the nearby farm fields escalated, with someone allegedly firing a weapon and throwing rocks at officers, while federal agents fired tear gas and drove cars erratically around crowds. Kazan said in a November podcast that the scene turned “pretty melee.” Workers ran from federal agents to keep from being arrested. One man climbed a greenhouse roof, only to fall to his death, marking the first fatality in the Trump administration’s violent immigration crackdown.
By the end of the day, federal authorities arrested 361 people and found 14 minors, according to DHS. The department did not return an SFGATE request for comment, and federal officials have declined to provide more details about who was arrested or what happened to the people following their arrests.
David Hafner, a spokesperson for the Department of Cannabis Control, said employing someone under 21 years old could result in a fine and punishment up to revocation of license. He declined to say when the state expects to end its investigation.
Most of the workers who were arrested faced either deportations or brutal confinements, according to a recent investigation by the Ventura County Star, with 150 people deported and few if any of the affected people returning to the county.
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Despite Glass House’s promise to provide legal support, many of the workers were unable to get legal advice before they were deported, according to the Star’s investigation. The publication followed one 25-year-old who said he spent hours lying flat on a greenhouse trying to avoid authorities, only to be found and quickly deported to Tijuana, where he knew no one. A disabled man told the Star that he was coerced into signing deportation papers because he thought he didn’t have any legal representation.
Glass House has also allegedly not helped George Retes, an army veteran and U.S. citizen who was arrested while driving to work as a security guard at the facility. He spent the following three days in detention without access to an attorney and was then released without any charges, according to the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit that is helping Retes pursue a claim against the government for wrongful detention. Andrew Wimer, a spokesperson for the nonprofit, said Glass House has not provided Retes with any legal or financial help.
The raid has continued to traumatize hundreds of families who had loved ones deported after working at the facility, according to Luis McArthur, the mayor of nearby Oxnard. He said some teenagers are now supporting their younger siblings after their parents were deported.
“We didn’t see an active involvement from Glasshouse to reach out to the family members of their employees that were affected. We didn’t see that at all,” McArthur said.
Glass House executives have painted the deadly raid as a mere hiccup in the company’s long-term path to global marijuana dominance. During an August earnings call, Glass House President Graham Farrar said the company was now working harder to automate workers out of its processes and that “we’ll lower our costs quicker” because of the raid, according to Cannabis Business Times.
On Wednesday’s call, Kazan repeatedly referenced the company’s desire to export cannabis to Europe provided federal law changes. While it’s highly speculative that any American company could soon legally ship cannabis overseas, Kazan still told investors the opportunity would be highly profitable for the company. “People are going to think we’re Nvidia with plants,” he said.
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Since the July raid, the company has pivoted to be much closer to federal authorities. Glass House contracted with a consulting company staffed with former Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, including a former ICE director, to help it strengthen how it verifies its workers. Kazan said during a podcast released in November that the company has now specifically invited ICE back to the facility: “We have said, ‘Come on out, anytime you want, no warrant. We don’t want any issues.’”
Kazan took time during Wednesday’s call to “acknowledge the passing” of one of the company’s board members, but neither Kazan nor Farrar mentioned any of the impacts the raid had on the hundreds of workers at Glass House’s facilities or the workers’ families. Although, one person “close to the company” who was granted anonymity by the LA Times to defend Glass House told the paper that the raid was “very sad.”
This article originally appeared on SFGATE and is republished with permission.
