By SILVIO CANTO, JR.

“Tijuana Taxi” was one of my favorite tunes by Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, or “Los Tijuanas,” as my late mother called them.

But nobody is taking a taxi down in Tijuana these days. In fact, they are setting them on fire, as we see in this Fox News report:

“Hundreds of Mexican troops arrived in the city of Tijuana on Saturday (Aug. 13) after more than a dozen vehicles were hijacked and burned by gangs as part of escalated violence in the area.”

“Approximately 350 National Guard troops were flown in to support the thousands of federal troops already in the state of Baja California,” reporter the Mexican daily newspaper Reforma. “There were no reported injuries in the Tijuana hijackings that tangled up traffic throughout the city and temporarily blocked access to the busiest U.S. border crossing.”

A few moments ago, I spoke with a friend who lives in Mexico and he tells me that they’ve shut down the city, especially at night. My friend believes that this was the objective all along, to scare the population. In all fairness, it does appear that order was somewhat restored, but people are still scared.

We also know that U.S. government employees in Tijuana were told to “shelter in place” as violence broke out across Baja California.

It appears to me that this is a battle for territory or drug routes to the United States, routes that have become more profitable since the Joe Biden administration decided to open up the border to please the immigration activists. The criminal elements know that there is an empty suit at the White House and a guy down in Mexico City who wants to hug them rather than fight them.

We know this quite well in Texas, where every effort is underway to stop lethal drugs from crossing over.

I guess we all long for those days when a Tijuana Taxi was a little VW that took you to your favorite “taquería.” Our friends down in Tijuana probably feel the same way.

Silvio Canto, Jr. is a Cuban-born U.S. citizen who teaches English at a north Texas college. He is the author of the book “Cubanos in Wisconsin” and has a daily online radio program and blog dealing with U.S. and Latin American politics, as well as sports and historic events, and is a regular contributor to American Thinker.