Federal Agents Raid Sovereign Native American Land To Destroy LEGAL Marijuana Plants

Native American reservations are legally recognized as sovereign land. That’s why it’s so shocking that federal agents in Menominee County, Wisconsin stormed the property of the Menominee Indian Tribe on Friday morning.

Federal Agents Raid Sovereign Native American Land To Destroy LEGAL Marijuana Plants Dea-raid-in-progress

Federal Agents Raid Sovereign Native American Land To Destroy LEGAL Marijuana Plants Dea-raid-in-progress

The purpose of the raid, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, was to destroy an industrial hemp crop.The chairman of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin says that the DEA seized about 30,000 marijuana plants, in addition to destroying others.

Jorge Rodas, a local reporter who was first on the scene Friday morning, said that he saw “a number of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies,” as well as “agents using front-end loaders to load plants into county highway department trucks. Agents were working at several locations for most of the morning.”

He told local news stations that Menominee County deputies “were standing guard, dressed in tactical gear with assault rifles.”

There were also undercover officers at the scene, as well as officials from Menominee and Oconto counties, which border Oconto County and the Menominee Indian reservation.

The DEA claims it had a search warrant, issued by a federal judge in Green Bay. In spite of the search warrant – which alleged other people were growing marijuana on their land – no arrests were made, because nothing illegal had been done. That didn’t stop the DEA from stealing the tribe’s plants though.

Tribal Chairman Gary Besaw accused the federal agencies of “improperly and unnecessarily” destroying the tribe’s hemp crop.

Besaw explained that the tribe has been growing “low THC, non-psychotropic” hemp – not even smokeable marijuana – “under an agreement with the College of the Menominee Nation.”

ll of this, he explained, is “in accordance with the 2014 Farm Bill,” which permits growing industrial hemp in their circumstances.

A statement from the Bureau of Indian Affairs on this raid reads as follows:

There has been disagreement between the Tribe and Acting U.S. Attorney Greg Haanstad as to whether the Tribe’s actions in cultivating its industrial hemp crop was in compliance with the 2014 Farm Bill. The Tribe has worked tirelessly to find a solution to this disagreement, including offering to destroy itself certain strains of the industrial hemp crop that both sides had identified as problematic and offering to file a Declaratory Judgment Action in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to allow a federal judge to decide the disputed issues. These offers by the Tribe were rejected in favor of the aggressive unilateral action we saw today.

The tribe says that they will sue the DEA for the illegal raid. Watch the local report below…

http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/10/federal-agents-raid-native-american-land/#

Federal Agents Raid Sovereign Native American Land To Destroy LEGAL Marijuana Plants

Federal Agents Raid Sovereign Native American Land To Destroy LEGAL Marijuana Plants

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