| Founded | 1989 |
|---|---|
| In | Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico |
| Years active | 1989–2011 |
| Territory | Mexico: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Jalisco. United States: California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington (U.S. state), Illinois, Michigan. |
| Ethnicity | Mexican and Other Latino Members. |
| Criminal activities | Drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, murder, arms trafficking, bribery.[1] |
The Tijuana Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Tijuana or Arellano-Félix Organization or Cártel Arellano Félix - CAF) was a Mexican drug cartel based in Tijuana. The cartel was described as "one of the biggest and most violent criminal groups in Mexico".[2] The Tijuana Cartel was featured battling the rival Juárez Cartel in the 2000 motion picture Traffic.
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Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the founder of the Guadalajara Cartel was arrested in 1989. While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred to a new maximum security prison in the 1990s. At that point, his old organization broke up into two factions: the Tijuana Cartel led by his nephews, the Arellano Félix brothers, and the Sinaloa Cartel, run by former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar and Joaquín Guzmán Loera El Chapo.
Currently, the majority of Mexico's smuggling routes are controlled by three key cartels: Gulf, Sinaloa and Tijuana —though Tijuana is the least powerful. The Tijuana cartel was further weakened in August 2006 when its chief, Javier Arellano Félix, was arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard on a boat off the coast of Baja California. Mexican army troops also were sent to Tijuana in January 2007 in an operation to restore order to the border city and root out corrupt police officers, who mostly were cooperating with the Tijuana cartel. As a result of these efforts, the Tijuana cartel is unable to project much power outside of its base in Tijuana.[3]
The Arellano Félix family was initially composed of seven brothers and four sisters, who inherited the organization from Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo upon his incarceration in Mexico in 1989 for his complicity in the murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena. Although the subsequent brothers' arrest in the 1990s and 2000s are blows to the Arellano Felix cartel, it did not dismantle the organization which currently is led by the Arellano's nephew, Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano.[4][5]
The Tijuana Cartel has infiltrated the Mexican law enforcement and judicial systems and is directly involved in street-level trafficking within the United States. This criminal organization is responsible for the transportation, importation, and distribution of multi-ton quantities of cocaine and marijuana, as well as large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine.[6]
The organization has a reputation for extreme violence. Ramón Arellano Félix ordered a hit which resulted in the mass murder of 18 people in Ensenada, Baja California, on September 17, 1998. Ramón was eventually killed in a gun battle with police at Mazatlán Sinaloa, on February 10, 2002.
The Arellano Félix family has seven brothers:
They also have four sisters, where Alicia and Enedina are most active in the cartel's affairs. The family inherited the organization from Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo upon his incarceration. Eduardo Arellano Félix was captured by the Mexican Army after a shootout in Tijuana, Baja California, on October 26, 2008;[4] he had been the last of the Arellano Félix brothers at large. According to a Mexican official, Enedina's son, Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano, has taken over the cartel's operations.[8] His two top lieutenants were Armando Villareal Heredia[9] and Edgardo Leyva Escandon.[10] Escandon remains at large and Heredia was captured in July 2011.[11] On November 5, 2011, Mexican troops arrested cartel lieutenant Francisco Sillas Rocha,[12] who was reported to the cartel's number two leader,[12] and some of his close associates.[12] Experts argued that Rocha's arrest had put the Tijuana Cartel "on the ropes,"[13] though some differed on whether or not the arrest put "the final nail in the coffin" for the Tijuana Cartel.[13]
The Tijuana cartel is present in at least 15 Mexican states with important areas of operation in Tijuana, Mexicali, Tecate, and Ensenada in Baja California, in parts of Sinaloa[14] and Zacatecas. After the death in 1997 of the Juárez Cartel's Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Tijuana Cartel attempted to gain a foothold in Sonora.[2] The Oaxaca Cartel reportedly joined forces with the Tijuana Cartel in 2003.
Fourteen Mexican drug gang members were killed and eight others were injured in a gun battle in Tijuana near the U.S. border on Saturday, April 26, 2008 that was one of the bloodiest shootouts in the narco-war between the Tijuana Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel. On December 1, 2011, William R. Sherman, acting special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in San Diego, announced that the cartel had been annihilated and the Sinaloa Cartel now controlled a large number of the drug routes the Tijuana Cartel once had.[15] On December 12, 2011, Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra also announced that captured cartel lieutenant Francisco Sillas Rocha had confessed that the Tijuana Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel had formed a truce and that the Tijuana Cartel was seeking to merge with the Sinaloa Cartel[16]
In October 1997, a retired U.S. Air Force C-130A that was sold to the airline Aeropostal Cargo de México was seized by Mexican federal officials, who alleged that the aircraft had been used to haul drugs for the cartel up from Central and South America, as well as around the Mexican interior. Investigators had linked the airline's owner, Jesús Villegas Covallos, to Ramón Arellano Félix.[2]
On August 14, 2006, Francisco Javier Arellano Félix was apprehended by the United States Coast Guard off the coast of Baja California Sur.
Los Palillos ("The Toothpicks") was a group operating within Tijuana Cartel, who worked as the armed wing of the Tijuana Cartel in the United States, for the control of the criminal activities in the United States specially California and Nevada.[17][18]
They were a criminal organization that operates from San Diego to Los Angeles and other California and Nevada cities. To avoid constant confrontations with the police and police interest reducing his wealth Ramon Arellano Felix began bribing almost any official possible. Ramon received money from members of the criminal group and local criminals to "kick up" money from their illegal activities such as kidnapping and contract killing take the half of the money and give it to the Tijuana Cartel to launderning it. That was way the Arellano Felix brothers operation include other clans in Tijuana and Los Angeles.[18][19]
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