Police Raids

He slipped away from the tour in France and joined a well-worn migrant route to a camp in Calais where Vietnamese people smugglers arranged for him to cross the channel to Britain — under the belly of a lorry.

“If you fall you’re dead,” explains Cuong, who made the overnight journey to Dover with three other Vietnamese migrants.

Arriving in a new country and speaking no English, his options were limited, so Cuong again turned to the migrant network for help. He ended up in Bristol and worked for a man running several cannabis farms in suburban homes.

Cuong says he had to work on his own, housebound and reliant on weekly food drops by his handlers.

“I got up early, ate rice and prepared feed for my plants… put them under lights for two hours and watered them,” recalls Cuong, his mundane routine punctuated by fear of arrest.

It was a common set-up: houses rented or bought in inconspicuous suburbs and converted into drug operations.

Police have also busted cannabis farms in dog kennels, pubs, an abandoned hospital and a even former nuclear bunker — many run by Vietnamese.

Around 12 percent of all cannabis convicts in the country are Southeast Asian, more than any other non-European nationality, a National Police Chiefs’ Council shows.

It took six months for cops to show up in Cuong’s neighbourhood.

Panicked, he bundled up as many plants as he could in bin bags and made a run for it. But it wasn’t long before he was back in business, growing weed in a hotel near Bristol.

He had earned nearly $19,000 — a small fortune compared to salaries back home — but accuses his boss of cheating him out of thousands more.