Homes in Braintree and Melrose allegedly used as base for human smuggling and illegal drugs

From the outside, the houses in Braintree and Melrose may have looked like regular single-family suburban homes, but inside, prosecutors say, undocumented immigrants were toiling to pay off smuggling debts by growing marijuana as part of a multimillion-dollar illegal enterprise.

Seven Chinese nationals were charged on Tuesday in federal court in what prosecutors say was a scheme to use illegal immigrant labor to produce black market marijuana in non-descript homes in towns across Massachusetts and Maine. Six of the defendants have been arrested and one is still a fugitive, officials said.

“This case pulls back the curtain on a sprawling criminal enterprise that exploited our immigration system and our communities for personal gain,” said U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley in a press release. “These defendants allegedly turned quiet homes across the Northeast into hubs for a criminal enterprise — building a multi-million-dollar black-market operation off the backs of an illegal workforce and using our neighborhoods as cover. That ends today.”…

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