Vehicles wait in a SENTRI lane at San Ysidro, one of the crossings where Tijuana police said they detained 32 people accused of selling places in line. Photo: CBP Photography, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Tijuana municipal police detained 32 people late last month after residents complained that drivers were paying to cut into the vehicle lines at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, two local accounts reported. San Diego Red, writing Oct. 30, said José Alejandro Avilés Amezcua, the city’s secretary of public safety, and David García Barraza, director general of municipal police and traffic, described an operation the previous week at both crossings. Gringo Gazette North, in a later report that also cited those officials, said the arrests came in late October and that the practice is known locally as gaviotear, from gaviotón, or “seagull.”
San Diego Red said the 32 people were held on administrative violations, not criminal charges, and were turned over to a municipal judge, who would have 36 hours to review their conduct. Gringo Gazette North likewise reported that the cases are administrative, that names and penalties had not been released, and that a municipal judge would decide sanctions case by case. Both accounts said city officials stressed the people arrested were not municipal employees or officials. Avilés told San Diego Red they were private individuals who had been controlling access to the lines through “supposed arrangements or deals.”
Avilés said the reported activity dropped after the sweep and that police will act when someone in line makes a direct complaint, both outlets reported. Gringo Gazette North, citing Uniradio Baja, said García Barraza tied the operation to complaints from drivers who were waiting their turn while other cars were waved ahead for a price.
The Gazette placed the sweep in a longer local history: the city reported about 700 arrests in a single month in August 2018 for forcing into border-bound lines, detained eight people at San Ysidro in November 2021, and in January 2025 pulled traffic aides off the San Ysidro approach after a video showed some of them taking money to let cars in. Officials are asking drivers who are offered a paid place in line, or who see it happen, to report it to Tijuana’s municipal public safety department or call 911 in Mexico.
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