Two of the four Chinese nationals who were recently arrested in connection to an illegal unlicensed marijuana operation in northern Michigan have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The other two defendants appeared in court on Tuesday.
Law enforcement officials say they found 5,045 marijuana plants, worth around $5 million, at a warehouse in Iosco County back in May. Prosecutors are investigating links between the operation and China.
State police documents obtained by WCMU via a public records request say the Alabaster Township facility was 5,700 square feet and smelled of marijuana. Officials obtained a search warrant based on energy bills totaling upwards of $260,000 from July 2024 to June of 2025.
Meiqing Chen, Wenying Wu, Changning Zhen and Zhenhong Nei were all arrested. Zhen and Nei have been detained by ICE. An online detainee database managed by ICE says Zhen and Nei are being housed in the Chippewa County Jail in Sault Ste. Marie.
Chen and Wu waived their right to a pretrial examination Tuesday. They have a date set for September 22 in circuit court.
Both Iosco County Prosecutor James Bacarella and the defendant's attorney Elias Muawad told WCMU they were working on a potential plea deal to end the case.
Bacarella said there are signs the defendants might be victims of human trafficking.
“Nothing to indicate that they were paid any type of fair wage for what they were doing, the living conditions being poor and cramped, they were required to remain secret, going there only in off hours and, and parking in the back,” he said. “Whoever was overseeing them was not allowing them to live a normal life.”
Marijuana farms run by Chinese firms have shown up in other states.
Muawad and Bacarella both said the defendants were not running the operation.
“They were just the workers or the mules, if you want to call it that, but they were just workers,” Muawad said. “They were not the owner of the property at all.”
It isn’t clear who the defendants were reporting to. Bacarella indicated that they weren’t seeking charges against the owner of the property. “Everything indicates that the landlord was not involved in the operation,” he said.
As for the two defendants detained by ICE, Muawad says he's unable to communicate with them. He also said it isn’t clear why only two of the four defendants were detained.
“It's weird as to what constitutes a deportation right away,” Muawad said. “I just think there's a policy, depending upon the case, of deporting them as quick as they can.”
While the charges are still formally in effect, they can only be brought back to face them if there is a court order issued for their return.
Recreational Marijuana is legal in Michigan, but there are regulations. The state statue only allows for 12 marijuana plants for personal growth. Investigators describe the warehouse as “excessively large” for legal marijuana growth, state police records show.
“It may be of lower quality…you don't know what chemicals were used in the growing process," Bacarella said. "It doesn't have the testing that's required.”
