EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Baja California’s attorney general says his office is investigating a widely-circulated social media video in which members of a Mexican drug cartel show large amounts of “seized” narcotics from rival gangs.
The purported members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel – dressed in black and holding rifles with a map of Baja in the background – warn rival traffickers they cannot operate in the city of Tijuana “without permission from the cartel.”
Baja California Attorney General Rafael Orozco Vargas on Wednesday told reporters state police intelligence officers are analyzing the CJNG video.
“We’ll see how recent it is,” he said at a news conference. “One cartel says something then another cartel says something else. You cannot give (the alleged seizure) the same validity as if it were an official investigation.”
What’s real is organized criminals are charging extorsion fees to merchants in Tijuana, particularly those that run money-exchange houses on the border, he said.
“We’re making progress […] We have one person in custody and have arrest warrants against gang members,” Orozco told reporters.
The news portal Zeta says Tijuana is not the only city in Baja where organized criminal groups extract “floor fees” or extortion money from merchants.
Groups like the Sinaloa cartel are targeting seafood vendors in the port city of Ensenada with a monthly 20,000- to 60,000-peso fee ($1,100 to $1,600) depending on the size of the business, Zeta said in an investigative report published this week.
Zeta said criminals on Feb. 20 tossed a Molotov cocktail at a business that refused to pay and have held other merchants for ransom. The portal quoted a fishing industry official as saying criminals are charging a one-dollar tax for every kilogram of oysters a business receives and between $3,000 to $5,000 for a truckload.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels are the main illicit exporters of the potentially deadly drug fentanyl from Mexico to the United States.
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