CJNG Bursts Onto the Scene in Rosarito, With a 325% Increase in Homicides

Following the capture of Sebastián Reynosa Sánchez, alias “El Quemado,” a Sinaloa Cartel (CDS) leader working for the Arzate brothers, Alfonso and René, of Los Mayos, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) launched a bloody incursion into Rosarito, increasing homicides in the municipality by 325 percent.

Currently, the conflict is being led by two individuals whom authorities from the Baja California Peace and Security Coordination Table have only identified by nicknames: “El Apa,” for the CJNG, who was an operative for Gerardo V. Vega, alias “El Gera” (killed on September 24); and both were operatives of Javier Adrián Beltrán Cabrera, alias “El Javi,” “Pedrito,” “El R4,” “Pit,” and/or “El Puma,” who currently operates in coordination with Diego Abel Miranda Rodríguez, alias “El Kateo,” of the Arellano Cartel. And below them, Pedro Amador Luna, alias La Pájara. On the Sinaloa side, along with the Arzate brothers, are GR or Gerber and Táctico, a man who, they suspect, “…is likely a police officer.”

The struggle between traffickers from the Sinaloa Cartel (who have gained criminal power in recent years in the beach municipality) and the CJNG caused the number of violent deaths to rise from two in August to 17 in September. In addition, a dozen reports were made to emergency numbers of “shootings” or “gunfire” and “kidnappings,” incidents that ultimately went unresolved, as neither injuries nor bodies were found by the municipal police.

For the investigators involved in the inquiries related to the clash between these cartels over the Rosarito route, the intense fighting began in April.

Of the criminals entering the area, they detailed that most are operatives of the Jalisco Cartel with criminal activity in the San Antonio de los Buenos district and the Santa Fe sub-district, who are now expanding into the northern part of Rosarito, which borders Tijuana.

But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that other CJNG drug traffickers and hitmen operating in different areas are also making sporadic incursions into the beach municipality, as was the case on October 1st when hitmen working for Carlos Alberto Chávez Favela, alias “El Chichí,” shot and killed 32-year-old Óscar Cristóbal Alanillo Robles. He was driving a white Tahoe SUV with license plate C44NWL1 and the logo of “Funerales Nueva Jerusalen” (New Jerusalem Funeral Home) – headed to Tijuana – at approximately 2:17 p.m. on the corner of Pilar Valdivia and Balbino Obeso streets in the Ampliación Lucio Blanco neighborhood of Rosarito.

Minutes after the attack, in the same neighborhood, police located the white Toyota Sienna used by the gunmen, abandoned on the corner of Mauricio Loaiza and Jesús González streets. Inside, they found three rifles, four magazines, and several spent shell casings.

Through surveillance videos, they detected that a second vehicle used by the criminals returned to Tijuana.

It was a small, late-model gray sedan with license plate 6UZT518, the same vehicle that was recorded on video 13 days later, in the early morning of October 14, 2025, when three men set fire to a hearse belonging to the same funeral home in front of the Forensic Medical Service facilities on Fundadores Boulevard.

MUSICIAN TORTURED, CRIMINALS SEARCH FOR HIS COUSIN

Although 37 percent of all violent deaths in Rosarito occurred in September, October also saw high-impact crimes.

The most notorious was the discovery of the tortured, bound, and strangled body of musician Eleuterio “Tello” Higuera Acosta, a member of the Tijuana-based groups Los Retoños and Incomparables. His body was found on Thursday, October 23, beside the Tijuana-Rosarito highway, on the border of the Santa Fe sub-delegation, heading towards the municipality of Playas de Rosarito.

His bandmates and family reported his disappearance and requested a search from the authorities on October 22. That Wednesday night, at 10:31 p.m., emergency services received a report of “other crimes related to an abduction.”

At number 808 Tenochtitlán Street in the Aztlán neighborhood of Rosarito, they initially claimed it was a party hall; later they said it was a house they rented for celebrations, and that they had rented it that night for a baptism.

When Rosarito police arrived, they reported finding the owner-manager and five musicians bound with zip ties: Flavio Romero, Brandon Higuera, Adalberto Higuera, Eduardo Romero, Rigoberto Orta Peña, and Antonio Amarilla. According to the report, all of them “refused to provide any information.”

They only reported that the crime had occurred approximately half an hour before they were rescued, and the prosecutor’s office investigators had access to the surveillance video footage; at the scene, they found remnants of gray tape, pink handcuffs, and black zip ties.

Strangely, despite the late hour, neither the organizers of the baptism nor any of the guests were reported at the scene. The videos show the criminals arriving in two pickup trucks, subduing the guests, and abducting Eleuterio.

The investigation made no progress until the following day, when an anonymous call to emergency services reported the discovery of a man’s body dressed in black. On a rural road, next to a pepper tree, near the Maderas Finas business, on the small hill, the body of a man was found lying face up, his hands bound with gray tape.

About three meters from the body, a piece of cardboard was found with the following message: “José Joel Higuera Quintero Jr., I died for being a treacherous rat and a murderer. No matter where you hide, we will find you.” [sic]

The young man in question is the son of Joel Quintero, a deceased member of Los Tucanes de Tijuana, who died in December 2020 from complications related to his cocaine addiction.

The man threatened in the narco-message, Joel Higuera, is a first cousin of Tello Higuera, the young man recently kidnapped and murdered. The victim’s family stated that they hadn’t heard from him in over two years.

But the prosecution does have a recent precedent: on September 3, 2024, Higuera Quintero was rescued by Tijuana municipal police after they received a report that a man had been kidnapped on El Rosario Boulevard in the Santa Fe sub-delegation. He was driving a Chevrolet Silverado when he was stopped, shot in the legs, handcuffed, and taken away.

In a chase, three criminals and the victim were intercepted on Paseo Alicante Street. Higuera claimed to be unaware of the motive for the attack and stated that he was an employee of the “Yarda Villegas” gang. The detainees, Jesús Eduardo Medina Robles, Gilberto Chávez Osuna, and Fabian Alejandro Pantoja Iribe, who were carrying three rifles, two pistols, and three bulletproof vests, were formally charged.

Also, in the late 1990s, some members of the Quintero family’s original musical group, Los Incomparables, were incarcerated at the Tijuana Social Rehabilitation Center for drug-related offenses and alleged alliances with the Arellano Cartel, currently linked to the CJNG.

CRISIS: CAPTURE OF EL QUEMADO AND ARREST OF COMMANDER SILVA

According to investigators from the Baja California Peace and Security Coordination Table, conflicts began to arise within the Sinaloa mafia in the beach municipality; First, on April 26, when César Pedro Silva Ibáñez, one of the most prominent police chiefs of the last four presidential terms, accused of being an operative for the Sinaloa Cartel—briefly suspended in 2018—and former deputy operations director and commander of the Rosarito Beach Public Security Secretariat, was arrested on a warrant for the kidnapping and double homicide of Dulce and Hugo “N.” Silva and two accomplices were videotaped harassing the young woman and kidnapping the couple at a bar. The young people’s bodies were discovered the following day, January 17, 2024, in the trunk of a car on the Rosarito-Tijuana toll road.

In 2021, Silva Ibáñez had also been investigated for the murder of Raúl Javier Paredes Esquer, in connection with the multiple homicide of eight men. That same year, 2021, CJNG gunmen attacked him with gunfire and kidnapped three women from his family, who were released hours later. They accused him of kidnapping and killing CJNG members to serve the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS).

On Tuesday, May 19, 2025, in retaliation for the investigation and capture of the aforementioned former commander, Efraín Aguilar Orozco, who at the time was head of the homicide squad in that municipality, and his bodyguard were shot.

Six months ago, after Silva’s arrest, his criminal duties within the Sinaloa Cartel were taken over by the civilian Sebastián Reynosa Sánchez, alias “El Quemado” (The Burned One). And according to authorities, this man’s gunmen were the ones who ambushed Alfredo Torres Franco, director of the Rosarito Municipal Police, at his home in Tijuana on June 14.

From April to September, El Quemado clashed with Gerardo V. Vega, alias El Gera, a CJNG operative supported by the Arellano Félix Cartel in the Santa Fe and San Antonio de los Buenos area (Tijuana). They fought for control of the Rosarito entry route, without significantly impacting the homicide rate.

During that period, the statistics for violent deaths were: four victims in January; one body in February; an increase to five deaths in March; another four in April; a decrease to three in May; seven victims in June (the month in which Pablo Edwin Huerta Nuño, alias El Flakito, a leader of the Arellano Félix Cartel, was captured in Tijuana); four deaths in July; and another two in August.

But the conflict reached a crisis point with the 17 violent deaths in September, which occurred after El Quemado’s arrest, when the CJNG attempted to exploit the perceived power vacuum and intensified their violence.

El Quemado was arrested on September 8th, with an arrest warrant issued by the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE), “for being directly related to the events that occurred on July 17, 2025, against a municipal police officer from Playas de Rosarito – Luis Herrera – in the Crosthwaite neighborhood.”

THE JALISCO ATTACK AND THE MURDER OF GERA

Earlier, on September 6th, the prosecutor’s office recovered the body of a woman murdered by Gerardo, whose body was abandoned on the Tijuana-Ensenada Scenic Highway. The hitmen accompanied the body with the following narco-message: “THESE ARE YOUR PEOPLE, QUEMADO” [sic].

On September 12th, a charred body was found in the Aztlán neighborhood; on the 13th, a human torso was found inside a Toyota in the Hermosillo neighborhood; on the 14th, a man was shot in the Constitución neighborhood and a second man was shot at the Lienzo Charro (rodeo arena). On the 16th, a man was shot in the back in the Ampliación Plan Libertador neighborhood, and a second man was killed in the Ampliación Lucio Blanco neighborhood; on the 17th, another man was killed in the Constitución neighborhood; on the 19th, a woman was shot in the genitals, and a 27-year-old man was killed in the Mazatán neighborhood; on the 21st, a man was killed in the Constitución neighborhood, another in the Mazatlán neighborhood, and another was wounded on Baja California Street. The deaths continued, reaching a total of 17 violent deaths in September and four in October.

For investigators, the most significant homicide in terms of the shift in the pattern of killings occurred on September 24th. That Wednesday, Gerardo V. Vega, a prominent CJNG operative, was shot to death. He was attacked while driving a beige Expedition SUV on Cuauhtémoc Street in the Aztlán neighborhood. Wounded, the victim got out of the vehicle and tried to flee on foot down Tatli Street, but his assailants caught up with him and finished killing him. Gera had survived another armed attack a few days earlier in the Morelos neighborhood.

Although the number of homicides is decreasing, investigators indicated they expect the rate to rise. “Other CJNG operatives have also entered Rosarito; they are seeking control of the route and are reorganizing,” concluded a security officer from the Coordination Committee.

Source: Zeta Tijuana