[Music]
NARRATION: Siskyou County is divided.
-- It's nine o'clock, we're going to go
ahead and start. I know that there are
more people coming.
NARRATION: On one side are the Hmong. Immigrants
from Southeast Asia.
On the other side are local leaders who
are meeting to vote on laws that target
the Hmong and their livelihoods.
[Music]
-- Would you pray with me this morning?
Heavenly Father, we come to you today
asking for your guidance and support on
behalf of our Board of Supervisors as
they begin their meeting.
NARRATION: The conflict here boils down to water,
and who gets to use it during
California's drought.
-- Water! Water!
NARRATION: Over the last six years about 4,000
Hmong people moved to Siskiyou, and a
number of them bought up land for farms.
Just not the kind of farms the locals
like.
-- These people are here illegally growing
their pot.
They come up here and invade our county
on an annual basis and they don't care
what they do to our property, and they
have destroyed it. NARRATOR: The county passed two
ordinances that restrict how people here
can sell and transport water, but only in
certain areas.
County leaders claim they're just
focusing on places with illegal
marijuana. But the Hmong say the laws
target their neighborhood
-- What do we need? Water!
-- The county just quietly, procedurally
voted to restrict the water for all
these people and they're outside
demanding water. Tt's really striking, the
mood in that room is so subdued, and the mood
out here, the anger is palpable.
[Chanting]
-- Our parents, our grandparents
fought
so hard to get us here.
Raise your hand if your family had
passed away because your family
protected the U.S. military.
NARRATOR: Most Hmong americans are first and
second generation refugees who resettled
after years of being persecuted after
fighting for the U.S. during the Vietnam
War. -- We have been described as cartel,
Asian Mafia. We only make two percent of
Siskiyou. Why are they targeting us?
NARRATOR: Even though California has legalized
marijuana, the county still bans
commercial cultivation.
The sheriff's office raids about 150
illegal grows each year and lately
they've been visiting this neighborhood
almost every week.
-- And this over here is the Shasta Vista
which is where we're headed today.
NARRATOR: The sheriff's office says Mt Shasta
Vista is home to more than 5,000
greenhouses full of illegal plants. -- So
these are sentries, or lookouts.
They have a huge phone tree
so they'll notify one another that the
Sheriff's office is on its way.
Let's go.
-- Sheriff's Office, show yourself, search
warrant!
I'm through.
-- The Sheriff's Office just cleared this
this property going around like a
tactical team with their long guns out.
Looks like nobody's here.
You can see here we got a bunch of pot
plants inside this greenhouse.
NARRATION: Siskiyou county has been home to a
marijuana cultivation for years. The
Hmong say authorities are using water as
an excuse to single them out.
If everybody's growing out here
why only enforce the water law for this
community?
Because this is the biggest
slice the pie. They are the
most dominant growers in the county.
NARRATION: The cops claim it's not just about the
pot. There's also pollution and water
being wasted during a drought.
Teah you can see the chemicals all up
here at the pool.
How standard is this for agricultural
purposes, and how much of it is toxic,
hazardous?
I, I couldn't tell you.
All this stuff just stays here so you
have all your wildlife, or you know the
things get cracked because it freezes
and then it just leeches out through the
environment.
[Music]
There it is,
there it is. So the sheriff's found,
they're called a 'spider hole'.
Basically a secret pit that was covered
with sand,
and whoever was here buried a bunch of
garbage bags full of marijuana
trimmings and actual weed
for safekeeping until they could, I guess,
find somebody to buy it.
1.32 they weigh close to a pound, right
around in the neighborhood of a pound.
This... that is a whole lot of weed.
Each one's a bag of money that's about
to go
get ground into dust.
NARRATION: In just a few hours the deputies
destroyed thousands of plants and
several hundred pounds of marijuana, but
made no arrests.
Do you ever feel like,
why bother what are we doing? -- Right, well
yeah, I mean you got people saying just
legalize it you know, and tax it. How can
you tax this?
We're not dealing with honest
folks here.
If you have nothing to hide then why are
you running?
[Music]
They're farmers. Hmong people, that's all
they know how to do. Especially our
elders.
NARRATION: There aren't many wells in Shasta Vista.
So most water is trucked in
the county has tried to ban the trucks
in certain areas, leaving the Hmong
without water for crops or other needs.
-- The whole Asian community here in Siskiyou
you uses about 300,000
gallons per day.
But one farmer out here uses over a
million.
Think about all these farmers around
here.
And they're blaming that the Asian
community are the ones that are creating
the drought for this county.
NARRATION: The Hmong say the county's water truck
ban hampered their efforts to fight a
wildfire back in June.
-- Sometimes I don't even recognize it.
I have to use GPS otherwise I can't get
around here.
A lot of people lost money, a lot of
people lost their pets they lost their
home,
livestock,
everything.
NARRATION: During the evacuation, police opened fire
on a 35 year old Hmong man.
Community members say he was fleeing the
fire with his family. Four officers
reportedly fired dozens of rounds into
the man's truck, killing him in front of
his wife and children, who were behind
him in a separate vehicle.
Police say the man was armed.
--And the allegation is that the sheriff
stopped him and that he then refused to
evacuate and drew a gun drew a gun and
fired a shot right at the Sheriffs.
--Right. --Why do you think that didn't
happen?
-- Because I'm a father myself
if I'm already evacuating my family out
of a danger zone to take them into a
safety area,
why would I bring them back into harm's
way?
-- You don't think it's possible that he
ran into a bunch of cops,
panicked, got scared, pulls out a gun? Oh
f--- no.
If I were to take my kids, my family, out
I have a clear mind of what exactly I
need to go do.
I'm scared already. I will not pull out a
gun
NARRATION: The Siskiyou county District Attorney
says the county's investigation remains
ongoing. The Hmong community has called
for the state to take up the case.
On top of everything, the Hmong are still
fighting for water and for that they
need Steve Griset.
[Music]
-- So this is a 350 horse motor
it can pump about 3,000 gallons a
minute.
Our pumps will pump out about 6 million
gallons a day onto our alfalfa fields.
NARRATION: Griset has a deep well on his
property that makes him the man that
Hmong farmers pay to fill up their trucks.
-- Six million gallons a day that you pump
in your fields. How much would you sell
to the Hmong on a busy day? 350,000
gallons.
-- It feels like a drop in the bucket -- It is.
We filled these trucks from 2016
17 18 19
and then
all of a sudden overnight, it's illegal.
NARRATION: The sheriff's office has pressured local
businesses to stop delivering supplies
like soil and fuel to marijuana growers.
And the county has also outlawed selling
water used for legal cultivation.
When Griset refused to comply they
sued him. --I've never heard in this
country of using that as a tactic, as a
political and a police action, to just
outright deny people water.
This is, it's like... barbaric.
NARRATION: Hmong water trucks have been sitting
idle near Giset's farm while the water
laws are challenged in court.
The man enforcing those laws is Sheriff
Jeremiah LaRue.
And he's not backing down. -- It's like a
third world country out there. And that
cannot be okay forget about cannabis
it's just about quality of life and how
people are living out there. -- What is your
message to the Hmong community today
going forward? --It's going to really take
a concerted effort from the people in
the Hmong community or in the Asian
community
to to recognize that this isn't a battle
of race, or a war that we have that's
going to continue in the future.
It, it needs to just be about really the
compliance with the laws. -- I mean there's
certainly a perception that this
Sheriff's Department is targeting
the Asian American community and
particularly the Hmong community. -- All i
can offer is is my opinion which
hopefully is taken as truth. We have to
focus where where we can make the
greatest impact,
and if it happens to be that that people
are Asian that are growing marijuana, so
be it.
[Music]
-- When did it start to to change and
become what you feel is a racist
atmosphere? --As soon as LaRue took office,
he goes 'okay let's go ahead and cut out
the water.' That's exactly what happened.
They cut off the water to just the Asian
community. They're saying that this is
not about race. But it it is about race.
NARRATION: In a statement to Vice News, the county
District Attorney said their goal is to
curb illegal marijuana cultivation and
the threat it poses to the public. He
called the allegations of racism, quote,
'simply a self-serving statement by an
interested group.'
But earlier this month a federal judge
temporarily blocked the water truck ban,
saying it had the effect of cutting off
the water supply to a minority community
that has recently been the target of
racial prejudice.
-- Been a while
we only have three trucks, normally
there'd be a lot. So the county
accomplished their goal. They ran these
people out of here.
NARRATION: The county is fighting the decision. But
while the case plays out in court, water
trucks have trickled back into
Griset's farm to fill up. but not as
many as before. --Thank you for the water!
-- Thank you. -- You're welcome -- We're very happy
today. -- Yeah, me too.