The U.S. State Department is telling people to be careful when they go to Mexico. In the latest warning, the department says that although many students, business folks, and tourists cross the border safely every day, there’s more violence in the country now.
The alert says the same things as the one from six months ago. It mentions that drug cartels are fighting each other and the Mexican security forces to control routes for smuggling drugs along the U.S.-Mexico border. The warning points out that most of these fights happen in northern Mexico, including places like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.
In the new alert, Tijuana is not listed as one of the cities where crimes like robberies, homicides, and carjackings have gone up. But it still includes northern Baja California, which is where Tijuana is.
The warning used to say, “Although the greatest increase of violence has occurred on the Mexican side of the U.S. border,” but they took that part out. Now, it just tells U.S. citizens to be careful in Mexico. It continues to talk about cities like Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, and Nogales, where there have been shootouts during the day in shopping centers and other public places. It also warns that criminals target and bother U.S. citizens in their cars in places like Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Tijuana.
Leaders from Baja California, like the Governor and Secretary of Tourism, are asking the U.S. State Department to change their warning about Tijuana. They say that the alerts don’t match what life is really like in Baja California and that it hurts the money they make from tourists. Tijuana’s Mayor also plans to ask for changes to the warning.
The State Department updates this travel alert two times a year. These alerts tell people about short-term safety conditions in a country. Different from this, travel warnings talk about long-term conditions. Mexico is one of five countries the State Department has issued travel alerts for, along with India, Niger, Malaysia, and the Philippines.