SAN DIEGO — Four men alleged to be leaders in a Mexican cartel enforcement cell have been indicted in San Diego on drug-trafficking charges and are accused of orchestrating a wave of violence in Tijuana, including the murders of two San Diego teenagers in 2018, according to federal prosecutors.
Edgar Herrera Pardo oversaw a group of enforcers called Los Cabos who worked to secure the Baja California corridor for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, according to prosecutors. The drug-trafficking organization, known by its Spanish initials CJNG, has risen in influence in recent years and has been battling the more entrenched Sinaloa Cartel for control of the lucrative Tijuana-San Diego smuggling route.
Herrera is charged alongside alleged lieutenants Carlos Lorenzo Hinojosa Guerrero and Edgar Perez Villa in a superseding indictment returned by a San Diego federal grand jury in March 2020, part of a larger prosecution against 13 others. The fourth alleged leader, Israel Alejandro Vazquez-Vazquez, is charged separately in a March 2021 indictment. The charges, which were recently unsealed, include conspiracy to import and distribute heroin and methamphetamine.
Herrera, known by the Spanish moniker “El Caimán,” which translates to “The Alligator,” was arrested in Mexico in 2019 with his former beauty-queen girlfriend aboard a bus in the city of Querétaro. He awaits extradition to the U.S.
The three others — with nicknames that reference apparent membership in Los Cabos, such as “Cabo 96" and “Cabo 89" — remain at large.
The group is accused of dispatching large groups of armed killers to take over the region, including planning more than 150 murders in a roughly six-month period, most of them in Tijuana, according to a court-authorized interception of a group chat described in a recent court filing.
Some of that violence was aimed at three teenagers on Nov. 24, 2018.
Christopher Alexis Gomez, 17, and Juan Suarez-Ojeda, 18, both U.S. citizens from San Diego, and Angel Said Robles, 17, of Tijuana were in a Tijuana apartment when a group of people burst in. The trio was tortured for about two hours before being killed, according to the Baja California Attorney General’s Office.
The San Diego teens had told family they were going to Ensenada for a barbecue the night before but didn’t return home as planned. Their friend, Said, lived in the Lomas Verdes neighborhood where the killings occurred.
Three men — identified by authorities by first name only — were arrested in Mexico in connection with the slayings about six weeks later. Those cases are pending prosecution in Mexico.
Vasquez is accused of coordinating the killings, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office motion to unseal the charges. Mexican authorities have not released further details about the case, including why the teens might have been targeted.
Los Cabos also frequently targeted law enforcement in Tijuana and are accused of killing at least three police officers, according to prosecutors.
The CJNG is considered the most dangerous, well-armed and fastest-growing cartel in Mexico.
“The CJNG’s rapid expansion of its drug trafficking activities is characterized by the group’s willingness to engage in violent confrontations with Mexican government security forces and rival cartels,” according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most recent National Drug Threat Assessment report.
The cartel was an early adopter of trafficking fentanyl into the U.S. as a cheaper, more reliable alternative to heroin and, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, is also “a prolific methamphetamine producer and chemical importer, using precursors procured from China and India.”
The war for Tijuana has grown into an intense three-way battle with the involvement of two remnant factions of the once-controlling Arellano Félix Organization — one is aligned with the CJNG against Sinaloa and the other is hoping to subdue both major cartels.
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