A new phase of cannabis enforcement is underway—and few in the industry are prepared. In this guest post, activist and cannabis business and political consultant Deb Tharp lays out a compelling case that recent raids, regulatory pivots, and conservative policy blueprints like Project 2025 are not isolated events but part of a broader, coordinated shift. Her warning to operators? The trap has already been set.
First, this piece isn’t about defending Glass House. It’s about understanding the forces now surrounding us all.
Watching The Walls Close In
Last year, the future of the cannabis industry was looking pretty bleak in light of developments at the time. We observed that:
- The rescheduling process would likely be defunded
- The Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment would be kneecapped with a 21 U.S.C. 860 carveout
- The new Farm Bill would close the hemp loophole
- The Chevron overturn would result in harsher regulatory interpretations under a conservative administration
- We’d see aggressive use of RICO
- Whether or not President Trump owns Project 2025, its anti-cannabis mandates would be implemented by his administrative appointees.
One year later, we have witnessed the writing on the wall become concrete policy, and the industry crackdowns have begun.
- CJS defunds rescheduling? Confirmed
- Rohrabacher-Farr protections destruction? Yup. Here’s the 21 U.S.C. 860 carveout on page 117 line 12. If passed, this will allow cannabis enforcement against all medical operators regardless of the Amendment based on proximity of their activity (including delivery) to schools, colleges, universities, playgrounds, public housing facilities, youth centers, public swimming pools, or video arcade facilities.
- Hemp ban? It’s on its way — see page 113 line 10
- Cannabis as collateral damage in unrelated crackdowns? We’re seeing exactly that with RICO chatter, and raids on illegal grows involving undocumented labor, including the deadly raids at Glass House.
Now, even more anti-cannabis fervor emerges as:
- Long-time drug warrior Terry Cole is confirmed as DEA head
- Congress directs the FDA to enforce against cannabis products marketed with ‘unlawful therapeutic claims’
- Roneet Lev, who has compared medical marijuana to the opiate crisis, is rejoining the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy
This is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 enforcement roadmap, no question, and immigration plus RICO expansion will be at the forefront of the plan, exactly as they proposed on pages 157 and 587 respectively.
Glass House’s Political Optics: Bipartisan Crackdown
The recent immigration raid on Glass House is more than just an ICE operation. It is a staging ground for political optics as the US begins to rebrand and repurpose its many investigative arms. Project 2025 makes it explicit:
“The only investigations not related to USSS’s protective function that agents should pursue would be directed by HSI and relate to tracking the financial crimes associated with illegal immigration. This should include tracing remittances, any funds that are used to pay coyotes or the cartels, and payments by businesses to illegal aliens and all other crimes associated with illegal immigration.” (Project 2025, page 157)
Glass House’s raid isn’t an aberration. This is the Project 2025 model in action. This is the test run for turning cannabis operators into enforcement targets by linking them to undocumented labor and financial crimes, even if they’re fully state-licensed.
Yesterday, Glass House Brands received immigration and naturalization warrants. As per the law, we verified that the warrants were valid and we complied.
Workers were detained and we are assisting to provide them legal representation.
Glass House has never knowingly violated…
— Glass House Brands Inc. (@GlassHouseBR) July 11, 2025
Explaining the Nuance
What Heritage/Project 2025 is saying on page 157-158 is that the USSS has lost focus because it’s ‘distracted’ by its dual mission (public protection vs. financial crimes), and they propose:
- Stripping out the financial investigators entirely, and
- Shifting them to ICE/HSI, where they’ll chase immigration-linked financial crime rather than general financial crime.
In other words, they’re repurposing federal financial enforcement to criminalize immigration-related economic activity. So basically, USSS’s old financial mission gets axed unless that crime connects to undocumented immigrants. In that case? It becomes priority one.
What They Are Really Looking For In The Glass House Raids
During the alcohol prohibition era, the public lost its taste for enforcement due to collateral damage from violent raids. This is part of the reason the feds switched gears and started using other enforcement angles like tax evasion.
In the case of Glass House, it’s a new field, but the same tactic in the face of lost political capital from violent raids. Here’s what the federal agents are really looking for:
- Labor Practices – Glass House employs hundreds of workers, many seasonal or contract, and HSI accuses them of using undocumented farm labor as well, a practice that President Trump has ok’ed in recent public statements. This is why we saw the comments that cannabis is a product, not “legitimate produce.”
- ICE/HSI is also investigating:
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- Housing conditions linked to “labor trafficking” accusations
- The use of unaccompanied, undocumented minors in cannabis processing
- Glass House really does have a history of labor tensions, possible union suppression, and they make a very juicy target for federal investigators.
To be clear, no one is arguing that it’s bad to enforce against human trafficking and child labor. Rather, this information explains the optics of the upcoming industry crackdowns and how the industry will be framed in light of this and similar situations to come.
How can reasonable liberals decry the conservative crackdown on cannabis if it’s addressing human trafficking? They can’t, they shouldn’t, and they won’t.
Whether it is intentional or not, the end result will be the same – the industry will suffer from guilt by association and a devolving public narrative while the anti-cannabis conservatives chip away at patient protections and states’ rights.
What We Know So Far
There’s no direct proof that federal redirection to immigration will be implemented against cannabis as a whole yet, but it’s highly plausible. Given the precision of the raids, the anti-cannabis actors entering the administration, and the erosion of already weak industry protections, we will see financial enforcement as well. Immigration is just the PR framing.
Here’s what we know so far:
- HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) led both Glass House raids
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- HSI is the criminal investigation arm of ICE, and exactly where Project 2025 says to transfer USSS agents not focused on physical protection
- HSI handles financial crimes and accusations of labor trafficking, a key focus of the Glass House raid
- Project 2025 explicitly proposes embedding USSS agents into ICE field offices.
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- From page 157: “USSS agents stationed outside of Washington, D.C., should be transferred to work in Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices where they would continue to be the ‘boots on the ground’…”
- If implemented preemptively (via informal coordination or “pilot programs”), this could already be happening without public disclosure
- Glass House raids escalated in sophistication
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- The second raid involved multi-jurisdictional warrants, financial audits, and labor interviews at both sites
- That suggests intelligence-driven coordination, consistent with the type of skillset USSS financial investigations agents bring, including those trained in cyber, financial forensics, or high-level threat analysis
And the optics are great for anti-cannabis zealots. Republicans get to say they’re tough on crime, immigration, and corruption. Democrats won’t defend cannabis operators with labor scandals, so they’ll stay quiet, providing no political shield for the industry.
This creates bipartisan silence while the enforcement machine rolls forward…all while the entire industry operates in financial grey areas with no banking protections what-so-ever.
What Can the Industry Do to Prepare?
The sad reality here is that the industry needs to prepare yesterday for this obvious financial and immigration-related crackdown. But most cannabis industry operators are still grappling with the realities of running a legitimate, state-licensed business — which is flatly impossible to do profitably under current regulatory paradigms. So, as they have in other cases, most operators will:
- Lawyer up
- Quietly pay fines
- Keep funneling product through side channels
- And still refuse to unify or lobby for systemic reform
So the cycle continues with compliance theater on the surface, black market behavior underneath, until the next bust — meaning a vicious cycle of more raids, asset seizures, and immigration actions through this administration. We can expect to see:
- Massive industry contraction as mid-size players collapse under enforcement costs
- Banking reform dies quietly, buried under headlines about labor violations and human trafficking ties
- Public sentiment turns against the industry as it becomes associated with abuse and crime, not wellness or equity
Possible Paths Forward (If We Are Serious About Survival)
If the industry wants to survive as a whole, operators need to clean house immediately. The actions of several non-compliant actors will cast aspersions on the industry as a whole and set our public opinion gains back for years.
- Fix labor practices. End the fake LPAs, pay overtime, stop misclassifying workers
- End the distro shell games
- Engage in real lobbying, not just lip service
- Push for banking reform like our survival depends on it, because it does
- Push for a sane state/federal framework for this industry
- Prepare your workers for federal raids with ASA Raid Preparedness Training
If we don’t fight for our survival and legitimacy now, we will lose decades of momentum in the face of the upcoming PR onslaught.
Is there a way forward? Yes, but it’s closing fast, and the window is razor-thin. Most operators will not take the hard path of reform and advocacy. They’ll roll the dice, get caught, and feed the enforcement/negative PR machine.
The cannabis industry as a whole is standing in the middle of a legal minefield while pretending the map isn’t real. They won’t come for the plants. They’ll come for the payrolls, the contracts, and the backdoor deals. So, if you think this stops with Glass House, you’re not paying attention. The trap is set. The trigger’s been pulled and we stand or fall together – as a whole – whether we want to or not.
