Cannabis seizures at border checks frustrate NM officials ‘Golden visa’ programs lose luster, create housing crunch
SANTA FE, N.M. — The U.S. Border Patrol is asserting its authority to seize cannabis shipments — including commercial, state-authorized supplies — as licensed cannabis providers file complaints that more than $300,000 worth of marijuana has been confiscated in recent months at highway checkpoints in southern New Mexico.
New Mexico’s governor says the disruptions have prompted a discussion with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose impeachment charges were dismissed last week. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham says she voiced concerns that the scrutiny of cannabis companies appears to be greater in New Mexico than in states with regulated markets that aren’t along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Authorized cannabis sales in New Mexico have exceeded $1 billion since regulation and taxation of the recreational market began two years ago. Yet cannabis transport drivers say they have been detained hours while supplies are seized at permanent Border Patrol checkpoints that filter inbound traffic for unauthorized migrants and illegal narcotics, typically about 60 miles from the U.S. border.
“Secretary Mayorkas assured the governor that federal policies with respect to legalized cannabis have not changed,” said Lujan Grisham spokesperson Michael Coleman in an email. “Regardless, the governor and her administration are working on a strategy to protect New Mexico’s cannabis industry.”
Managers at 10 cannabis businesses including transporters petitioned New Mexico’s congressional delegation this month to broker
free passage of shipments, noting that jobs and investments are at stake and that several couriers have been sidelined for “secondary inspection” at Border Patrol checkpoints.
“We request that operators who have had product federally seized should be allowed to either get their product returned or be monetarily compensated for the losses they’ve sustained,” the letter states.
Sen. Martin Heinrich said the Department of Homeland Security should be focused on urgent priorities that don’t include cannabis suppliers that comply with state law.
“Stopping the flow of illicit fentanyl into our country should be the Department of Homeland Security’s focus at these checkpoints, not seizing cannabis that’s being transported in compliance with state law,” the senator said in a statement, referring to the parent agency for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. “New Mexicans are depending on federal law enforcement to do everything they can to keep our communities safe. Our resources should be used to maximize residents’ safety, not distract from it.”
A public statement last week from the U.S. Border Patrol sector overseeing New Mexico provided a
reminder that cannabis is still a “Schedule 1” drug, a designation also assigned to heroin and LSD.
“Although medical and recreational marijuana may be legal in some U.S. states and Canada, the sale, possession, production and distribution of marijuana or the facilitation of the aforementioned remain illegal under U.S. federal law,” the agency’s statement said. “Consequently, individuals violating the Controlled Substances Act encountered while crossing the border, arriving at a U.S. port of entry, or at a Border Patrol checkpoint may be deemed inadmissible and/or subject to, seizure, fines, and/or arrest.”
Matt Kennicott, an owner of Socorro-based High Maintenance, a cannabis business, said seizures by Border Patrol started in February without warning and create uncertainty about shipments that include samples for consumer-safety testing. He said cannabis producers in southernmost New Mexico rely on testing labs farther north, on the other side of Border Patrol checkpoints, to comply with safeguards against contaminants like mold or pesticides.
“It’s not a little confusing, it’s a lot confusing,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out where this directive came from.”
When Ana Jimena Barba, a young doctor, began working at a hospital in Madrid last year, she moved in with her parents a half-hour outside the city until she could save enough to buy her own home.
But when she started looking at houses in the same village, almost everything was priced at more than 500,000 euros, or about $533,000.
The amount — nearly 20 times more than the average annual salary in Spain — happens to correspond to the cost of the country’s “golden visa,” a program that offers residency to wealthy foreigners who buy real estate there. After a decade, the program has reeled in billions of euros in investments, but it has also helped fuel a housing crisis.
“There’s nothing I can afford,” said Barba, an allergist who has been working 100 hours overtime every month to save up a nest egg. “If foreigners inflate the prices for those of us who live here, it’s an injustice,” she said.
Faced with growing pressure to address its housing crunch, Spain said this month that it would scrap its golden visas, the latest in a wider withdrawal from the program by governments around Europe.
A half-dozen eurozone countries offered the visas at the height of Europe’s debt crisis in 2012 to help plug budget deficits. Countries that needed international bailouts — Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece among them — were desperate for cash to repay creditors and saw a path to bring in investors while reviving their moribund real estate markets.
Countries reaped a windfall.
Spain alone has issued 14,576 visas linked to wealthy buyers making real
estate investments of more than 500,000 euros. But the prices that they can afford are squeezing people such as Barba out of a market, already inflated by the rise of Airbnb and the draw of Wall Street investors.
“Access to housing needs to be a right instead of a speculative business,” Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, said in a speech this month as he announced the end of the country’s golden visa program.
The visas make it easy for people outside the European Union to buy the right to temporary residency, sometimes without having to live in the country. Investors from China, Russia and the Middle East flocked to buy real estate through them.
In recent years, British nationals have followed suit in the wake of Brexit, snapping up homes in Greece, Portugal and Spain, joined by an increasing number of Americans looking to enjoy a lifestyle they can’t afford in major U.S. cities.
But golden visa programs are being phased out or shut down around Europe as governments seek to undo the damage to the housing market. And after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, EU officials urged governments to end them, warning they could be used for money laundering, tax evasion and
even organized crime.
Portugal, which has reaped more than $6.2 billion in investment from the visas, modified its program in October to remove real estate as an investment to reduce speculative buying and cool an overheated housing market. An influx of foreigners has displaced thousands of low-income Portuguese citizens from homes in cities such as Lisbon.
The government in Lisbon is trying to fix the affordable housing problem with new rules that would require landlords to rent empty flats to families, capping rents and converting some commercial real estate to housing.
Greece, one of the last countries in Europe to offer a golden visa, is raising its foreign investment threshold to 800,000 euros — or about $850,000 — from 500,000 euros in the Athens area and on popular islands including Mykonos and Santorini. The country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, acknowledged severe housing shortages and pressure on rental markets, especially around Athens, but he said the government still wanted to draw investors.
Greece raised more than $4.5 billion in investment from the visas from 2021 to 2023 alone.