"Federal Charges for Massive Chinese-Funded Illegal Marijuana Grow on Navajo Land in New Mexico" 4 February 2025

A federal jury in late January indicted three people for their alleged involvement in a massive 400-acre illegal marijuana cultivation that has been operating out of Navajo Nation land in New Mexico and involved Chinese investment and migrant workers, charging documents indicate.

The nine-page indictment charges Dineh Benally, 48, his 78-year-old father, Donald Benally, and Irving Rea Yui Lin, 73, who federal prosecutors say is a California resident, with a slew of crimes related to the illegal marijuana operation...

The charges stem from November 2020 raids from the 25 illegal marijuana grows allegedly operated and controlled by the defendants... In a later search of two more marijuana farms allegedly operated by Dineh Benally in Estancia, New Mexico, authorities identified 10 Chinese migrant workers...

The three defendants are also accused of violating the federal Clean Water Act by discharging pollutants into the San Juan River...

Additionally, the indictment alleges that Dineh Benally and Rea Yui Lin “solicited Chinese investors to obtain funding to build infrastructure to grow and cultivate marijuana.”...

The Navajo Division of Public Safety released a statement on the arrest of Donald Benally on Jan. 23, 2025, saying that “[m]any Dine’ farmlands were destroyed and its fresh water polluted with pesticides, creating an imbalance and disharmony for the Dine’ people and its land.” ...