Gang Finds Safe Haven and Base for Operations in Tijuana

Drifting between Los Angeles and this wild border city, 18th Streeters are confounding law enforcement efforts to tame the gang’s mobile criminal network.

Tijuana is home to an 18th Street cell that authorities believe was formed in the early 1980s by Los Angeles gang members fleeing prosecution. Today, 18th Streeters frequently venture south to party and, according to law enforcement officials, pursue their criminal endeavors.

Authorities on both sides of the border suspect that the gang is using its Tijuana ties to deal drugs and arms beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. California’s tougher three-strikes law has added to the shift south, officials say.

“Arrests of suspects will be difficult as gang members easily return to Mexico to escape arrest and prosecution,” the California Department of Justice stated in an assessment of 18th Street last year.

One knowledgeable source said the gang is planning to establish Tijuana safe houses for homeboys on the run or illegal immigrants who have been deported after serving time in California prisons.

A respected Tijuana businessman, an 18th Street veteran from Los Angeles, is behind the move, the source said, adding: “He wants them around in case he needs them.”

Authorities know of at least one instance in which 18th Streeters embarked for Tijuana with a trunkload of guns, a law enforcement official said. Efforts to intercept them failed.

In Tijuana, a state judicial police detective says he has received information that 18th Streeters have traded weapons for drugs.

Meanwhile, Tijuana 18th Streeters have recently been spotted near MacArthur Park, a gang stronghold west of downtown Los Angeles.

“I think it is safe to say they were not here on vacation,” says Jim Jones, an anti-gang agent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Tijuana municipal Police Chief Jose Alvarez Barriere acknowledges that 18th Street has taken root in his city. But he insists that few Southern California members travel there. They are caught, he says, in a “filter” set up by U.S. police north of the border.

But “Diablo,” 22, an 18th Streeter from South-Central Los Angeles who is on parole, isn’t slowed down. He says he is in Tijuana on this Saturday night for the third time in a month to visit relatives and party with gangster friends.

Unexpectedly, Diablo bumps into an 18th Street ex-con he knows, working as the doorman at a nightclub. The two did time together in Delano State Prison in the Central Valley. Other 18th Streeters, including Diablo’s brother, have worked at the club too.

Moving down Avenida Revolucion--a raucous club-and-bar scene--Diablo is hailed by a leathery skinned Tijuanan. They are strangers, but they are family. Eighteenth Streeters. “From the barrio,” as Diablo puts it. They chat privately, compare tattoos. Diablo helps the man out with a few dollars.

Amid the chaos of what tourism promoters call the busiest boulevard in the world, it seems 18th Streeters always find each other.

Sometime long after midnight, Diablo ends up in a cavernous club popular among gang members, where he finds 18th Streeters from three Los Angeles cliques.

“The homies are here,” Diablo declares as he heads for the dance floor.