While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred to a new maximum security prison in the 1990s.

Currently, the majority of Mexico's smuggling routes are controlled by three key cartels: Gulf, Sinaloa and Tijuana—though Tijuana is the least powerful.

[13] Nonetheless, most of the victims in Tijuana were white-collar entrepreneurs, and the kidnappings were bringing "too much heat on organized crime" and disrupting the criminal enterprises and interests of the cartel.

To put down the violence, InSight Crime states that a pact was probably created between military officials and members of the Sánchez Arellano faction to eliminate Simental's group.

[15] With the arrest of El Teo in January 2010, much of his faction was eliminated from the city of Tijuana; some of its remains went off and joined with the Sinaloa Cartel.

InSight Crime believes that this could explain why the Sinaloa cartel has left Sánchez Arellano as the figurehead, since it might be too costly for El Chapo financially and politically to make a final push.

[17] Despite being a shell of what it once was in the early 2000s along with the capture of several top suspected members of the Tijuana Cartel, the group appears to retain significant control in the state of Baja California.

Following the defection of El Mayo's head of operations in Tijuana and the reintegration of its Cabo San Lucas branch it is evident that the Arellano Félix Organization has retaken control of its Tijuana hotbed from outside influences as well as other important hubs in Baja California leaving Mexicali and Rosarito as the last known Sinaloa Cartel outposts in Baja California though how long they will remain under Sinaloan control is debatable with the rapid defection of Sinaloa Cartel operators in traditionally Arellano Félix territories.

[20][21] The Tijuana Cartel has infiltrated the Mexican law enforcement and judicial systems and is directly involved in street-level trafficking within the United States.

Ramón Arellano Félix ordered a hit which resulted in the mass murder of 18 people in Ensenada, Baja California, on September 17, 1998.

[37] After Benjamin Arellano-Felix pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to launder money on January 4, 2012, it was accepted that the Tijuana Cartel had greatly lost influence.

On November 5, 2007, Francisco was sentenced to life in prison, at ADX Florence, after pleading guilty in September 2007 to running a criminal enterprise and laundering money.

[43] On August 31, 2012, Eduardo Arellano Felix was extradited to the United States to face trial for racketeering, money laundering and narcotics trafficking charges in the Southern District of California.

On July 13, 2023, a nearly 20 year investigation against dozens of Tijuana Cartel defendants concluded when former cartel hitman Juan Francisco Sillas Rocha pled guilty to three charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, in a U.S. federal court in Fargo, North Dakota.

That was way the Arellano Felix brothers operation included other clans in Tijuana, San Diego and Los Angeles.

In the 1990s, the Tijuana Cartel decided to expand their market opportunities in Colombia, exchanging drugs for weapons.

Its decentralized location in Mexico and proximity to the United States border allowed the Arellano-Felix brothers easy routes to control the illicit drug markets in Tijuana and southern California.

[50] The infamous drug cartel led by the Arellano-Felix family spent years transporting, importing, and distributing cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin into the United States.

[52] The impacts on the United States population were deemed so significant that Members of Congress proposed further changes to migrant policies in border cities like Tijuana.

[53] The Congressional Research Service identified the Tijuana Cartel as one of the four dominant drug trafficking organizations in 2020.

In this case, the Sinaloa Cartel outweighed the falling Arellano-Felix Organization and gained control of the Tijuana/ San Diego route.

The Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano new generation organization of the cartel is believed to be one of the newest leaders in it to begin shipping cocaine from Colombia, particularly from Los Rastrojos and other Colombian dealers.