In an earlier article, we explained that Donald Trump and his MAGA allies in the American government are trying to again make it illegal for marijuana seeds to be shipped into the country, or shipped interstate.

Marijuana seed importing and interstate marijuana seeds shipping were illegal until Congress passed a law in 2018 that made them legal. Trump’s team wants to make them illegal again, which would make the marijuana seeds industry what it was before 2018: a criminal enterprise.

Trump loves dictators and fascists, and imitates them. We’ve all seen his ICE immigration agents terrorizing and murdering immigrants and even American citizens.

ICE raids disproportionately target states run by Democrats, ignoring the fact that MAGA Trump cult states like Texass and Florida have many more illegal immigrants than the states being raided.

ICE has injured and killed many people, including American citizens like Renee Good:

ICE, which stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has a more accurate name: American Gestapo. And indeed, there are many similarities between Adolf Hitler’s policies and America’s war on immigrants, marijuana growers, and other persecuted minorities. Two superb books by Richard Lawrence Miller document these connections: Nazi Justiz, and Drug Warriors and Their Prey.

Miller’s well-proven thesis is that Hitler’s war on Jews and other minorities is a template for the American war on harmless “illicit drug” users and growers.

Democrat-dominated California is a prime target of Trump’s ICE rage, which certainly contributed to the brutality of federal raids of a state-licensed California marijuana farm on July 10 2025.

Dozens of masked, heavily-armed ICE agents, assisted by the National Guard, other feds, and local police, did military-style raids on two legal marijuana plantations run by Glass House Farms in Camarillo.

Like many other American employers who use undocumented workers, Glass House has been accused of exploiting migrant laborers with low wages, injurious working conditions, using child labor, human trafficking, sexual abuse. The government used these allegations to justify their raids.

Glass House claims it has now “fully complied” with federal search warrants, and denied knowingly employing minors or illegal labor. The company faced prior lawsuits regarding labor violations, and settled one lawsuit for $305,000.

The company claims it has implemented stricter hiring protocols, especially to prevent child labor violations. They also claim contractors employed by Glass House pay workers an average hourly rate of $18.60 USD, which is higher than California minimum wage.

Please note: this magazine opposes large-scale commercial marijuana farms. They don’t produce marijuana even close to as good as what you can grow for yourself at home, and use chemicals and other practices that are bad for growers and consumers. We feel the legal retail marijuana marketplace should be open for any grower of cannabis, including so-called black market growers, who are currently excluded.

We also oppose the use of undocumented workers. That said, what the federal government did to Glass House and its employees could be considered a war crime. One migrant worker died because of the raid, hundreds were injured and/or arrested.

Family members of Glass House management, staff, and fieldworkers, along with anti-fascist protesters, gathered near the facility that day, documenting the military assault.

In the chaotic violence created by the government, agents used semi-lethal weapons and tear gas. One protester on scene was 38-year-old California State University philosophy and mathematics professor Dr. Johnathan Caravello.

Caravello is a long-time labor, migrants, and tenants rights activist who is part of a citizen patrol monitoring and protesting immigration raids. He was alerted about the Glass House raids, raced to the scene, waited along with others on the road into the facility that was blocked by agents who fired rubber bullets, assault canisters, and tear gas grenades into the dense crowd, which included elderly people and children.

When a huge tear gas canister landed at his feet, Caravello tried to kick it away from protesters. Then he picked it up and threw it high above the agents so it landed behind them without coming close to them at all. For this harmless act, Caravello was arrested and charged with assaulting a federal officer with a “dangerous or deadly weapon.” If convicted, this charge carries a 20-year prison term.

During Caravallo’s trial, federal prosecutors and their witnesses appeared to be lying constantly. The government’s case centered around testimony from federal agents Shawn Hinca and Rafael Cortez, but their testimony was full of holes and made zero sense.

Tear gas, when thrown by armed federal agents wearing helmets, gas masks, protective eye wear and bulletproof vests at unarmed protesters, constitutes a “less lethal” weapon and is a necessary crowd control tool, they testified. But when a protester throws the same tear gas canister back over the heads of agents in a way that causes no harm at all,  it constitutes felony assault with a deadly or dangerous weapon, they claimed.

The government’s dishonest depiction of the July 10 raids was contradicted by federal agents’ own body-camera footage. For example, the government argued Caravello indicated malicious intent to “assault” agents when he yelled, “Put that fucking canister back in your pants. Throw it right back in your fucking face.” Yet, bodycam footage clearly shows Caravello throwing the canister over the heads and to the side of agents in front of him.

Bodycam video showed agents laughing about using so-called Triple-Chaser tear gas canisters they described as “fucking awesome.” Minutes before Cortez threw the tear gas canister that Caravello threw back over agents’ heads, Cortez refused a fellow agent’s request to protect the protesters from injury, instead insisting that even more weaponry be used against unarmed people.

“We’ll fucking gas the shit out of them like we did earlier,” Cortez said.

Prosecutors said a Triple-Chaser tear gas canister is the size of a Coke can and capable of breaking cheekbones, nose and teeth. On cross-examination, however, agents admitted the actual canister thrown by Caravello was a pocket tear gas canister, which is much smaller and lighter.

Further, Border Patrol agents claimed they needed to deploy weaponry to clear the road for ICE vehicles, but bodycam footage showed them throwing canisters at protesters not blocking traffic, long after ICE vehicles passed through the crowd.

Caravello’s attorney presented witnesses describing federal agents as aggressive, unprofessional, out of control. One witness explained she was hit with tear gas three times and has permanent scars from that.

One of Caravello’s academic colleagues, retired California State University Channel Islands chemistry lecturer Nancy Deans, testified her skin was badly burned from exposure to chemical weapons.

Caravello’s attorney correctly stated that Caravello did not commit any crimes, but federal agents did.

“This case should never have been filed. He never should have been dragged through this. And I’m sad they did,” the attorney said.

On April 9 2026, it took a jury only two hours to find Caravello not guilty on all counts.

“I’m tired of these sorts of raids happening,” Caravello said after his victory. “Them kidnapping, abducting people, indiscriminately using weapons against us. They’re armed to the teeth. We have no weapons, we are not violent, we don’t hurt them, we don’t kill ICE agents. We don’t do any of that shit. The least we should be able to do is throw a fucking tear gas canister away from us.”

The mainstream media always fails to put ICE raids and attacks on marijuana growers into context. The simple fact is that the American “war on drugs” has always used military-style violent raids against the marijuana community.

Even after 1996 when California voters legalized personal marijuana growing, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) did violent raids on marijuana growers in California, injuring medical patients in wheelchairs and many other harmless people.

National Guard troops and other armed goons have long been used in the federal government’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP), a program started in 1983 that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking marijuana growers in California using military tactics and weapons.

And even though many believe America has mostly legalized marijuana, the war on marijuana continues.

In October 2022, California’s attorney general announced that CAMP, which was only operated during outdoor harvest season, will transition into a year-round task force called the Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Marijuana, or EPIC.

The rebranding of CAMP is more than just an expansion of how many months per year it terrorizes citizens. It’s also a blatant demonstration of the fact that law enforcement agencies and so-called marijuana legalization statutes are servants of the ultra-capitalist for-profit corporate marijuana industry.

Especially in Canadian law, you see the government is paired with private corporations to eradicate home growers, especially home growers who retail marijuana.

Corporate Big Ag marijuana requires slave labor, government enforcers, and unfair business advantages, because connoisseur home grown marijuana is so much better than their products, and less expensive. Corporate Weed cannot compete in a fair marketplace against the “illicit” buds you and I grow at home!

A main component of Trump’s fascism is using law enforcement and courts to punish people for exercising their rights to free speech and civil disobedience. People who stand up to the Orange Fuhrer have been busted and prosecuted on bogus charges, to shut them up. Prosecutors know they won’t win the cases, but the cost and trouble of being a defendant is an effective way of discouraging Americans from fighting fascism.

Recall also that the war on marijuana was explicitly designated a “real war” by the Supreme Court in rulings that gave government agents the right to violate our rights because “civil rights must sometimes be waived in times of war.”

Two members of my magazine team were subjected to military-style raids from anti-marijuana police. In one case, law enforcement spent $213,000 on an investigation, and even flew over a grower’s little home, in a military helicopter with infrared radar to detect indoor grow lights. All that to snare a disabled elderly person growing five plants for personal medical use.

Another colleague woke to find Robocop-clad drug agents kicking his front door down, putting guns to his head. He was raided for a very small indoor grow op. Police threw him down, kicked him in the face, stole cash and valuables from his house, threatened to take him to jail and then hide in the house until his partner came home, threatening him that “we’ll do a deep search of every orifice she has.”

Growers and general community members in Northern California’s famed Emerald Triangle marijuana growing region endured a war zone reality for decades before legalization and a sharp fall in marijuana wholesale prices finally reduced pressure.

Dr. Caravello told us that even though marijuana is legal in California, during the nine months he was awaiting trial on bail, he was subjected to random drug testing. Because marijuana is still federally illegal, if he had tested positive for marijuana, the feds could have revoked his bail and imprisoned him immediately.

The bottom line is America is increasingly a vicious, failed country, and nobody is safe. We should all have the courage of Dr. Johnathan Caravello.