Tijuana municipal police seized three rifles, five loaded magazines, and spent shell casings from a vehicle in the city’s eastern zone early Saturday morning, March 28.
Officers responded to a report of two men loading weapons into a white Mitsubishi Eclipse with California license plates on Calle del Palmar in the Valle San Pedro area. When police arrived at the scene in Valle de las Palmas, they found the firearms and ammunition inside the vehicle. No arrests were reported.
Vehicle Suspected in Prior Armed Attack
Authorities believe the Mitsubishi Eclipse was recently used in an armed attack, based on the spent casings found inside. The weapons, ammunition, and vehicle were turned over to the FGR (Fiscalía General de la República), Mexico’s federal prosecutor’s office, for further investigation.
The California plates on the vehicle point to the well-documented cross-border flow of weapons from the United States into Mexico. In February, Mexico’s defense minister said the vast majority of cartel weapons, including rifles, rocket launchers, and grenades, originate north of the border. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported seizing 4,359 guns and nearly 649,000 rounds of ammunition bound for Mexico since January 2025.
Valle de las Palmas: A Persistent Hot Spot
Valle de las Palmas sits roughly 30 kilometers southeast of central Tijuana, near the road that connects Tijuana to Tecate. The area has long been one of the most violent corridors in the municipality, with cartel-driven homicides and armed confrontations reported regularly.
The seizure comes during a particularly tense period for Baja California. In late February, widespread cartel violence erupted across the state after the capture of Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” Vehicles were torched and police stations came under fire in Tijuana and surrounding areas.
Local efforts to reduce the number of firearms in circulation have included an unusual initiative by the Archdiocese of Tijuana, which began collecting guns and ammunition at Catholic churches last year. “Every gun on the streets of Tijuana is practically a homicide waiting to happen,” Baja California’s head of homicide investigations, Miguel Ángel Gaxiola, said at the time.
The incident was first reported by Punto Norte.