NM marijuana firms sue federal agencies over ‘unlawful’ seizures

Eight licensed marijuana companies in New Mexico claim in a federal lawsuit that Border Patrol agents violated their constitutional rights when they seized more than $1 million worth of “state-legal cannabis products, cash, and other property” at interior checkpoints, court records show.

The lawsuit was filed this week against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency.

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The suit, which claims violations of due process rights, demands a jury trial and an order that federal authorities return all seized property or its “equivalent wholesale/retail value.”

Seizures of state-regulated marijuana

Homeland Security has long operated inspection stations along interstate highways in New Mexico, where agents search vehicles for contraband and check the immigration status of drivers and passengers.

But as MJBizDaily reported in April, federal agents at these checkpoints have been seizing intrastate shipments of state-regulated marijuana this year as well as company- and employee-owned vehicles.

The situation is serious enough to have drawn attention from New Mexico Gov. Michelle Grisham Lujan, who criticized Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of Homeland Security, in leaked audio released in April.

As of May, the New Mexico Cannabis Control Division told MJBizDaily it was aware of at least eight such incidents, but the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court claims these “summary seizures are ongoing and becoming more frequent.”

According to the lawsuit, the New Mexico plaintiffs suing Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Protection Agency are:

• Mesilla Valley Extracts, a licensed manufacturer in Las Cruces.
• Royal Cannabis, a vertically integrated licensed company that does business as Baked Chicken Farm, the operator of a large-scale cultivation facility in Berino, near the Texas border.
• Super Farm, which does business as Smokey Road Farms and is a vertically integrated licensee in La Mesa.
• Impact Farms, a microbusiness licensee in Albuquerque.
• Chadcor Holdings NM, which operates as Top Crop Cannabis and is a vertically integrated licensee in Las Cruces.
• Mylars, a licensed Las Cruces-based manufacturer and distributor.
• Rollin Love, a licensed retailer in Golondrinas.
• Desert Peaks Farms, a licensed cultivator in Mesilla Park,

Attorneys for the litigants include members of national law firm Greenspoon Marder, according to court records.

In recent incidents, federal agents have inspected vehicles of cannabis company employees, who provided the agents shipping manifests demonstrating the product is regulated in New Mexico.

‘Illegal under federal law’

However, the lawsuit claims the federal authorities told the employees “the products on the manifests were illegal under federal law.”

Typically in such stops, the suit alleges, the driver is detained for hours and informed they were being placed on an “International Drug Traffickers List” – but without being charged with a crime or issued paperwork documenting the incident.

In several cases, according to the lawsuit, agents eventually dropped employees at remote locations without transportation home.

These incidents “have resulted in the deprivation of state-legal property rights without due process” and “are having a rippling effect and, if left unchecked, have the potential to undermine New Mexico’s entire regulatory scheme,” the lawsuit added.

The federal government has yet to respond to the suit, according to court records.

Chris Roberts can be reached at ch***********@mj********.com.