“Despite carrying the consequences of criminalization, and being key sustainers of the legal industry as workers and consumers, Latinos are underrepresented as business owners in the industry.”
By Jason Ortiz and Maritza Perez Medina, Latino Cannabis Alliance
One of the first reported deaths resulting from the Trump administration’s renewed immigration raids in 2025 was that of Jaime Alanís Garcia—a beloved husband, father and provider. Jaime was a longtime farmworker, laboring at a state-legal cannabis farm in California on the fateful day he tragically fell from a building as federal immigration agents swarmed his workplace.
The moment of Jaime’s death sent shock waves through the Latino community, particularly for those of us who work in the marijuana space. Yet, to our frustration, the greater cannabis community was largely silent. This tragic event forced many of us who work within the cannabis ecosystem to realize that we did not have an organized and credible Latino voice to express our anger and mobilize our people toward action—while our labor, our business, our language and our culture have helped to lay the foundation for the cannabis industry as we know it today.
Despite our outsized impact on the industry and our disproportionate rates of
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