On the orders of René Arzate, a hitman in the service of Rafael Yocupicio, alias “El Cabezón,” and Franklin Ernesto Huezo Hernández, alias “El Ranchero,” criminals from the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS) are being abducted and murdered in Tecate and Tijuana.
In December alone, this internal conflict between Sinaloa cartel factions resulted in 33 disappearances and five violent deaths in Tecate, as well as the arrest of five suspected gunmen wearing vests emblazoned with the letters FER (Fuerzas Especiales del Ranchero – Ranchero Special Forces); and in Tijuana, 78 murders and eight young people reported missing.
On Sunday, December 28, at 5:54 p.m., members of the Enlace y Restauración Collective reported the discovery of the body of a young man found in the second section of Urbi Villas del Prado in Tijuana, inside a plastic bag on a dirt road.
As of press time, the State Attorney General’s Office and Raúl Cornejo, head of the search collective, referred to the victim as unidentified, pending DNA confirmation, but noted: “That young man had just been abducted very recently.”
Unlike Tecate, where violent abductions have been publicly reported, in Tijuana, the list of disappearances hasn’t indicated the involvement of third parties in any case, even when it has occurred, as in the case of the victim found on December 28. They have only been registered as disappearances.
There are eight men, including two minors, all last seen between December 3 and 27, in areas such as the El Dorado neighborhood, Melchor Ocampo, Delicias neighborhood, Terrazas del Valle, Zona Río, and Fraccionamiento Hipódromo.
Regarding the more than 15 homicides committed in the last week of December in Tijuana, a state investigator reiterated: “They are the result of the internal conflict within the Sinaloa Cartel,” which has been ongoing since the end of November in the border city.
“The victims, almost all of them, have been operatives working for Rafael de Jesús Sainz Villamontes, identified as ’27,’ who are clashing with the hitmen of Erick Omar Villamontes Vega, alias ‘El 100,’ those of Rafael Yocupicio, ‘El Cabezón,’ and those of Franklin Ernesto Huezo, alias ‘El Ranchero,’ who follow the orders of René Arzate; they’re greater in numbers and are wiping them out.”
Of the criminal operatives recently killed, the one closest to Rafael de Jesús Sainz Villamontes, 27, was Esmeralda Janeth Fabián Díaz, and she didn’t die in Tijuana.
Intelligence units integrated into the Baja California Peace and Security Coordination Table reported that unofficial reports of the woman’s murder began circulating on websites sponsored by organized crime around 1:30 p.m. The armed attack was reported around 11:00 a.m. at a seafood restaurant located on the highway between Guadalajara and Zapotlanejo, at the intersection of Anita Hernández Street, in the Las Granjas neighborhood, on the outskirts of the town. Police found a woman dead and a young man injured, both originally from Tijuana, Baja California.
While fleeing on a motorcycle along the highway towards Guadalajara, the attackers skidded and fell, allowing police officers to catch up with them and arrest them. Their identities, characteristics, and whether or not they were carrying firearms haven’t yet been revealed.
Around 7:30 p.m., Jalisco authorities unofficially confirmed to Baja California police that the victim was Esmeralda Fabián Díaz, even though the victim looked different from the most recent photographs held by local law enforcement.
However, officially, her body remained unidentified at the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo) morgue in Guadalajara at the time of this writing.
Esmeralda Fabián had been classified by the Baja California government as an operative for Rafael de Jesús Sainz Villamontes, with a criminal record including theft and breach of trust in 2006; assault in 2023; an outstanding arrest warrant for homicide dating back to 2023; and involvement in investigations for threats and property fraud. Of the deaths this week in Tijuana, local authorities indicated that only two victims found on December 26 have been identified as part of the conflict due to their alleged connection to the operations of the “27” cell: the man found tortured inside a blue barrel, whose identity wasn’t disclosed; and Adán Rodríguez Méndez, shot and killed in Terrazas del Valle. In the same incident, a young U.S. citizen, identified as Eduardo Montiel, was injured.
“But the other deaths aren’t being ruled out; an investigation is underway, because due to the persecution, the victims have left their comfort zones, like Esmeralda Fabián, and have been murdered,” a researcher concluded.
TECATE CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE OF THE CDSC
On Friday, December 19, the internal split within the Sinaloa Cartel became public in the municipality of Tecate.
Following the arrest of several criminals, local police were informed that hitmen under the command of Rafael Yocupicio, alias “El Cabezón,” and Franklin Ernesto Huezo, alias “El Ranchero,” are hunting down the former criminal operatives of Alejandro “Cando” Castañeda, a CDS (Sinaloa Cartel) leader executed on November 1, 2025, in Tecate, “to settle accounts.”
According to these detainees, the order to eliminate them was given because, after the death of their boss, the group of traffickers, protected by an armed criminal cell of 20 thugs, attempted to operate as “free agents” in Tecate, without receiving orders or instructions from the Arzate brothers.
The CDS leaders are after Oscar López, nicknamed “Chicho,” who controls the urban area; José Ángel Flores Ayala, known as “El Siete,” who operates drug trafficking in the border area between Tecate and the United States; and Salomón Barragán, alias “El Salo,” who controls the rural area of Tecate.
This internal war has left five people dead in less than 72 hours, and more than a dozen missing; as a warning to those who defected, two young men, aged 18 and 20, were “kidnapped,” one of them was found dismembered, wrapped in black plastic bags, with a direct message from the drug cartel.
The body of Carlos Alejandro Fragoso, 20 years old, was found on December 26, 2025, inside black plastic bags on the Tecate-Mexicali highway, at kilometer 122; he was dismembered, and according to data provided by forensic experts, he was murdered at least 12 hours earlier. His death, investigators reported, was brutal and violent, and prior to being killed, according to the characteristics of the body’s extremities, he was also tortured. Carlos Alejandro (or Carlos Arellano, as he appears on social media profiles that lack photos or detailed information, but which were used regularly) was last seen on December 21, 2025, when he was headed to the Rincón neighborhood in Tecate. He was in the company of his 18-year-old cousin, José Eduardo Hernández, whose whereabouts remain unknown; the missing persons group “Mothers Until We Find You, Tecate” continues to search for him.
According to investigators from the Peace and Security Coordination Table, the kidnappings of Carlos and Eduardo were used by members of organized crime to send a message of a split between cells of the Sinaloa Cartel that had previously operated together in Tecate. This split had become public with acts of violence two days earlier.
An informant told investigators that the young men were abducted after being called to perform “a job” as part of the restructuring of the internal criminal organization of the Sinaloa Cartel. For months, they had been working under the orders of Alejandro Castañeda, alias “El Cando,” who was executed in the early morning of November 1, 2025, in the Rincón neighborhood of Tecate, the same neighborhood where the young men were abducted.
THE CANDOS REBELLION
Intelligence reports from the Security Table indicate that El Cando was allegedly executed by his CDS (Sinaloa Cartel) associates after disagreements that had persisted for the past few months. He was killed while with one of his romantic partners inside a clandestine bar called Beer Zoo.
Following El Cando’s execution, tensions among local leaders escalated and reached their peak on Friday, December 19, when, amidst disappearances and shootouts, new alliances were formed, fracturing the cartel.
On December 26, next to the body of Carlos Alejandro Fragoso, an alleged associate of El Cando, who had been kidnapped and killed, a white cardboard sign was found with a message that reads:
“Óscar Lore López, aka El Chicho or El Trompas, José Ángel Flores Ayala, aka El 7 or Patitas, and Salomón Barragán, aka El 10 or Jota. This is how your lives will end up if you follow in the footsteps of those traitors. The city of Tecate still belongs to Mr. Aquiles. Sincerely, Los Kabezones”
The individuals mentioned hold prominent positions within organized crime in Tecate, according to investigators. Since 2019, they had been part of the structure of Dany Ortiz Covarrubias, alias El Moreno, the plaza boss in Tecate serving the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), who was executed for “generating unnecessary tensions due to his mental instability” in January 2022, inside a barbershop while having his beard trimmed, by individuals who entered and shot him repeatedly in front of his bodyguards, the assailants fled the scene after the crime. Upon his death, his associates joined the Sinaloa Cartel, which they served until December 19, 2025, when they broke ranks to join the alliance formed by the CJNG and the CAF, which had established itself in Tijuana at the beginning of the year.
The urban area was then secured by Oscar López, “El Chicho,” whom investigators identify as a resident of the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood and who is in charge of the operation of buying, selling, and trafficking narcotics, and of leading a group of hitmen known for their brutal actions.
The rural area from the Nueva Colonia Hindú, Valle de las Palmas, to Carmen Serdán is controlled by Salomón Barragán, who also controls the key routes for traveling to areas of the municipality of Tecate such as El Hongo, Santa Verónica, and Rumorosa without having to use highways where authorities from all three levels of government are present. He operates not only as a key figure in drug trafficking but also in the illegal extraction of fuel, according to members of the peace councils in Baja California.
José Ángel Flores, known as “El Siete,” is identified by security forces as one of the main human traffickers bringing people illegally into the United States; he controls 90 percent of the neighborhoods bordering the neighboring country, which also allows him to control the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and migrants between the two countries. For years, he has remained one of the main human smugglers in the municipality of Tecate, and in recent years he has been the target of armed attacks in neighborhoods where he or his gunmen are prevalent: Bellavista, Colinas del Cuchumá, El Encanto, 1 de Mayo, among others.
33 PEOPLE MISSING DURING DECEMBER IN THE “MAGIC TOWN”
In December 2025, up to the 21st, the municipality of Tecate had recorded zero homicides, but in less than 72 hours, the number rose to five. The figure that escalated exorbitantly was the list of missing persons, a fact that was revealed by Mónica Mariscal, president of the Mothers Until We Find You Tecate collective:
“We all wish these numbers would decrease, but the reality is that it’s an everyday occurrence; the disappearances don’t stop, on the contrary, they have increased in recent weeks, even though things calmed down for a few months. Currently, we have accumulated 162 search warrants created during 2025; of these, 85 percent are for people missing here in Tecate, the other 20 percent are derived from requests made from other municipalities or states. In the six years that we have had the collective, we have registered, including those added this year, nearly 900 missing persons; we are talking about more than 600 people in Tecate. More than 100 people have disappeared per year; imagine how many families are currently searching for a family member, their children, husbands, fathers, siblings… It’s overwhelming.”
Calls and messages requesting support for the collective to join the search for a missing person surged in the first 21 days of December:
“In the month of December alone, we have accumulated 33 new search warrants, and I can tell you that this figure isn’t even close to the reality because there are families who are afraid, like in the towns of La Rumorosa and Cerro Azul; it’s very rare for people to decide to make their search public for fear of reprisals. We have become aware of cases where they are searching for a brother or sister and another one ends up disappearing, or even a parent.” “I have tried on multiple occasions to engage in dialogue with the mayor of Tecate, Román Cota, but the door to his office remains closed to me; members of our group have gone to request a meeting, but he refuses to see them; we were even denied permission for the march we hold every year in November for our missing loved ones. It’s his decision, but one thing must be made clear: closing your eyes doesn’t make what’s happening disappear,” said Mónica Mariscal, who throughout 2025, along with the members of the collective she leads, has managed to locate 71 bodies found in clandestine graves, mainly in the Cerro Azul and Rumorosa areas.
“We do have the support of federal and state authorities, especially Regional Prosecutor Genaro Guzmán, who has supported us considerably, something I cannot say about the municipal government,” she concluded.
Hours after the war between the two factions and the new alliances became public, high-impact crimes surged in the Pueblo Mágico (Magical Town): between December 21 and 22, approximately eight people were reported kidnapped. One of the incidents occurred in the Alfonso Garzón neighborhood, also known as Nido de las Águilas, in the municipality of Tecate; upon arriving at the scene after a report through the C5 emergency system, municipal police officers located a Honda Odyssey vehicle blocking the road. During a preventive inspection, they found a loaded black PMAG magazine with 40 5.56 caliber cartridges inside.
Approximately 25 meters from the first vehicle, officers located a second car, a Toyota C-HR, with the engine running. Inside, on the passenger side, a black rifle-type firearm with a magazine inserted was clearly visible. Upon inspecting the vehicle, three loaded brown PMAG magazines were found in the trunk, along with 58 .223 caliber cartridges and 50 5.62 caliber cartridges. It is presumed that Carlos and Eduardo were among those detained who were traveling armed.
On Monday, the 22nd, a man was murdered in the La Bondad neighborhood after armed men entered his home, abducted him, and killed him in the street. Hours later, a young man was run over and killed in the Emiliano Zapata “Coyotera” neighborhood.
On the morning of December 24th, a man was murdered near the Tecate River; his body was found behind the Caliente Casino, owned by Jorge Hank.
These crimes were followed by two more killings: one in the Santa Anita neighborhood, where a man surnamed Valladolid was murdered; two days later, his cousin was the victim of an armed attack in the same neighborhood, which he survived.
Sources: Zeta Tijuana, Cartel Insider Archives
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