Latest Tijuana Stories

By Tim GaynorREYNOSA, Mexico -- Hard-partying U.S. teens and college students have long crossed the Rio Grande to knock back cheap beers and tequila shots in Mexico away from the watchful gaze of parents, teachers and police.Now, a move to legalize drug possession in Mexico is set to put wings on their traditional revels and create the type of weekend drug tourism more commonly seen in Europe. That worries local authorities already swamped by drug crime."When I heard the news I said,...

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Two Mexican police officers have been shot dead in Tijuana, local authorities said on Friday, the latest in a spate of police shootings along the U.S. border in recent months. The body of a homicide unit officer was found on Thursday, dumped inside the trunk of an abandoned car with U.S. number plates. He had been shot with three bullets. Separately, a police officer working with an anti-kidnap unit, was shot in the abdomen late on Thursday evening and died...

By Tim Gaynor TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Posing in a Mexican sombrero for a souvenir photograph, a tourist pauses to rub the snout of a zebra. Throwing back its ears it starts to shift, snort and heave until a rasping bray erupts. Actually painted donkeys, Tijuana's fake zebras have been part of life along a main strip of tequila bars and trinket stands in this fast-changing city south of San Diego, California, for more than seven decades. Daubed with black hair-dye stripes, the white...

By Tim GaynorTIJUANA, Mexico - Posing in a Mexican sombrero for a souvenir photograph, a tourist pauses to rub the snout of a zebra. Throwing back its ears it starts to shift, snort and heave until a rasping bray erupts.Actually painted donkeys, Tijuana's fake zebras have been part of life along a main strip of tequila bars and trinket stands in this fast-changing city south of San Diego, California, for more than seven decades.Daubed with black hair-dye stripes, the white animals are hitched...

By Tim Gaynor TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Hurling himself over a steel fence into the no-man's-land between Mexico and California, an undocumented migrant sprints across a narrow strip lit by harsh arc lights and watched over by video cameras on tall posts. Before he can shin up a second barrier of tall concrete pillars topped with seismic sensors and a layer of steel mesh more than an arm's-length wide, U.S. Border Patrol agents close in fast and arrest him . That scene is repeated...

By Tim Gaynor TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - A growing number of high-tech U.S. visas aimed at boosting security on the Mexico border may be winding up on the black market for sale or rent, U.S. officials said on Friday. At least 11,840 Laser Visas, issued to Mexican citizens for travel to the United States, were reported lost or stolen in two major border cities last year, up nearly 15 percent from 2004, they said. The credit card-sized documents, which include the bearers' photograph...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Mexican citizen charged with conspiracy to smuggle drugs through a 2,400-foot (730-meter) tunnel under the Mexico-U.S. border appeared in court on Monday and was held without bail. Carlos Eugenio Cardenas-Calvillo, who was arrested over the weekend by immigration and customs agents, has ties to the warehouse in Otay Mesa, California, under which one of the tunnel entrances was located, investigators said in court documents. The tunnel, which had ventilation,...

By Lizbeth Diaz TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexico's leftist presidential front-runner on Thursday attacked Washington's plans to build a high-security border fence that aims to crack down on illegal immigration. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told a crowd of about 7,000 in the gritty border city of Tijuana that fences and additional border police would only create more conflict. "It must be made clear to our neighbors that nothing will be resolved by building fences, nor with more border...

By Marty Graham LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Federal authorities were trying to determine on Thursday what was smuggled through a sophisticated tunnel into the United States from Mexico they call one of the longest ever found. "Whether the tunnel was used for smuggling aliens, smuggling narcotics or a worst case scenario, some sort of weapon, we don't know," Michael Unzueta, special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in San Diego, said at a news conference....

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico demanded a U.S. investigation on Monday into the death of an undocumented Mexican shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent as he tried to cross into California last week. Raul Martinez, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego, confirmed that an agent had fired on a man on Friday as he tried to cross the border near San Diego, after the would-be immigrant had thrown rocks at him. Mexico's foreign ministry named the dead man as Guillermo Martinez,...