Mexican drug lord El Chapo lands in New York to face charges


Tom Hays, Peter Orsi and Bradley Klapper | Associated Press
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NEW YORK — Infamous Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who twice escaped from maximum-security prisons in his country, was extradited at the request of the United States to face drug trafficking and other charges and arrived in New York late Thursday.

A plane carrying Guzman landed at a suburban airport, where a caravan of SUVs waited to take him away. Guzman, the convicted leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of the world’s largest drug trafficking organizations, was expected to spend the night in a New York jail before his first appearance in a federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Friday, officials said.

Mexico’s Department of Foreign Relations announced Guzman was handed over to U.S. authorities for transportation to the U.S. earlier Thursday, the last full day of Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration and a day before Republican Donald Trump’s scheduled inauguration.

Guzman was taken into custody by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Ciudad Juarez, a border town across from El Paso, Texas.

Guzman, who’s in his late 50s, first escaped from prison in 2001 and then spent more than a decade on the run before he was recaptured, only to escape again in 2015 via a mile-long tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.

The 2015 escape was highly embarrassing for the government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, and Mexican officials were seen as eager to hand the headache off to the United States afterward. A court denied Guzman’s appeal and found his extradition was constitutional, the Mexican Department of Foreign Relations said.

In Mexico, Deputy Attorney General Alberto Elias Beltran told reporters late Thursday that Guzman still faces formal charges in 10 other cases.

“When he completes his sentence in … the United States, he will return to Mexico to continue” the prosecutions, he said.

Guzman’s lawyers had fought extradition since his 2016 recapture and said Thursday the Mexican government sent him to the United States to distract the public from nationwide protests over gasoline prices.

“It was illegal. They didn’t even notify us,” lawyer Andres Granados said. “They handled it politically to obscure the situation of the gas price hike. It’s totally political.”

Besides New York, Guzman faces charges in five other U.S. jurisdictions, including San Diego, Chicago and Miami. He could face the possibility of life in a U.S. prison if convicted.



Authorities in Chicago spent years putting together a sweeping case against Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel — but after the drug kingpin was captured in 2014, many federal insiders thought he would wind up in federal court in New York.

Outgoing U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch twice served as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in 1999-2001 and again in 2003-2005. Many thought she would steer the high-profile Sinaloa Cartel case back to federal prosecutors in New York.

Both the U.S. attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn have brought charges against Guzman.

Some legal observers thought Chicago would have a strong claim on Guzman because Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the son of one of Guzman’s associates, is in custody in the Chicago case.

Zambada, a high-ranking cartel member, pleaded guilty in 2013 and is cooperating against Guzman, making the Chicago case among the strongest in the United States.

Zambada-Niebla allegedly oversaw the export of tons of narcotics into Chicago and other cities, using trains, ships, Boeing 747 cargo jets and even submarines.

Meanwhile, Margarito and Pedro Flores — twin brothers who grew up in Chicago — agreed to become government informants in the 2009 indictment brought in Chicago against Guzman and his cartel leaders.

The twins had partnered with Guzman to smuggle tons of drugs from Mexico to Chicago. In their heyday, they were importing 1,500 kilograms of cocaine and heroin into the United States every month.

They even went to Guzman’s mountain compound in Mexico and secretly recorded top cartel lieutenants including “El Chapo” in two phone conversations, in which the kingpin was implicated in a heroin deal on the West Side, prosecutors said.

The brothers eventually helped federal agents seize 15 kilograms of heroin in Chicago in October 2008 and 12 kilograms in Cicero in November 2008, court records show. In 2015, they were sentenced to 14 years in prison and have been in federal protection since then.

An indictment in New York accuses him of running a massive drug operation that employed thousands of people, laundered billions of dollars in profits back to Mexico and used hit men to carry out murders, kidnappings and acts of torture.

After his recent escape, he became something of a folk legend for a segment of Mexico’s population for his defiance of authorities. He was immortalized in songs known as narco-corridos, ballads about the drug trade and drug bosses.

It was while on the lam the second time, in fall 2015, that he held a secret meeting with actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo. The encounter was the subject of a lengthy article Penn published in Rolling Stone last January, right after Mexican marines re-arrested Guzman in the western state of Sinaloa.

In the interview, Guzman was unapologetic about his criminal activities, saying he had turned to drug trafficking at age 15 simply to survive.

“The only way to have money to buy food, to survive, is to grow poppy, marijuana, and at that age, I began to grow it, to cultivate it and to sell it. That is what I can tell you,” he was quoted as saying in Penn’s article.

The decision by Mexico to extradite one of its most prized prisoners to the U.S. comes as Trump has taken a tough stand on illegal immigration from that country, vowing to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. Mexican officials have repeatedly said they will not pay for a wall.

Derek Maltz, who headed the DEA’s Special Operations Division until his retirement in mid-2014, said the timing of Guzman’s extradition less than 24 hours ahead of Trump’s inauguration could be seen as a show of good faith by Mexico.

Ghost and Tommy can't get to the El Chapo like they did Lobos.

Trump should deport him back to Mexico. What's a matter with Mexico no firing squads over there?

Do you think that is better kill el Chapo or bury him in 2 m x 3 m cell until he die?

The Chapo prosecution = MASSIVE POLITICAL CAPITAL

Think of Trumps Mexico rhetoric, and how he keeps harping on the violence in places like Chicago. I could see Chapo, during his trial becoming like a symbol for both his wall politics, as well as his " War on Violence" campaign that WILL be forthcoming....(Good lord, stop and frisk, gotta get a conceal carry license..)

I AM a little surprised Chicago didn't get the case, ( They STILL got Zambadas son locked up somewhere in the Loop I think..) but as politicized as it is, I'm not that surprised...

If I was him I would want prison until I die. Because this way their is always a chance to kill some guards.

If the put me against the wall that would be okay with me either way is fine with me. Maybe he could lead a gang in prison and use them.

No their is no gang violence in Chicago trump is full of shit right?

Sever his fucking head. How many millions of dollars will be wasted on his trial? Maybe he mysteriously dies awaiting trial.

Pretty sure that wasn't AT ALL what Cabrini was saying, but whatever.


There's no fucking chance of him "killing some guards", not here. Not in a federal prison in NY. His loyalty is back in Mexico, because he has none here, despite what some people would like to think, those who sold the drugs that he and his organization moved into this country, don't give a shit about El Chapo, and they aren't risking their lives and freedom, for some harebrained scheme to kill guards or dig tunnels and shit like that. His best chance at freedom is doing what those two guys did last year, who escaped from Clinton or some shit for like two weeks, feign falling in love with some ugly ass prison worker, and building his own goddamned tunnel.

Anybody here on the forums at Borderland beat ? That's where I get most of my cartel info from. Chapo still has family out there running things including a brother I think.

@Chicken713

I might have to check it out, question, you have an idea how many active cartels in Mexico, with intercontinental capabilities? Is it only Sinaloa at this point?
Also, for the love of God ARE THE ZETAS STILL A CARTEL?

@ Sinatra

Pretty Much, lol

@ Foot reads

My point was that instead of REALLY actually caring, or DOING anything to help the situation, he will use it as an excuse to wage a " War on Violence", which ironically, is in large part an after effect of the " War on Drugs". Basically a war on the inner city disguised as being tough on crime.

You figure they can perp walk Chapo, and say' " See, this is the type of guy we should be scared of", and then he can do his " War on Immigration", let's build a wall thing. Like all this shit is very familiar.

It's like the violence in Mexico. A lot of that carnage came from guns trafficked out the US. Well who owns the guns? Corporations that hire lobbyist that make it hard to properly legislate gun control. Then the politicians take a payoff, then whine about the violence they helped enable, because it's a narrative that works in a political climate, Tough on Crime.... I mean the hippocracy....

Chicago seems to figure in his political trajectory, rather largely...

I don't even understand your comment. Aren't you the same guy who told a story of a biker killing a guy's whole family over some stupid ass reason. It stands out in my mind because you really didn't seem AS DISGUSTED WITH THIS CASUAL BRUTALITY, ( you seemed to kinda relish telling the story, in a similar way Smeary swoons over cartel death photos...) as you seem about Chicago murders that only affect black people in Chicago. It just kinda strikes me as false outrage. (You also made some,.........uncomfortable references to your own violent background, I would never judge you like that dude, I didn't walk your shoes, understand? Like you don't know any of these people..)

Something else, man y'all need to stop with that Whites = Trump, Clinton = Blacks shit. I don't give a flying fuck about NO POLITICIAN. PERIOD. Or no Red or Blue, Left, Right, Liberal, Conservative, Millenial, Baby boomer, Tea Party, Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, White lives matter, ALL lives Matter! Jesus all the stupid fuckin divisive LABELS MAN. Where the common sense at? Cause Black, White, they all part of the same system.

You know how many educated blacks I know who didn't vote for Clinton, cause they read those emails and found out the Clinton Foundation stole a BILLION DOLLARS from the Haiti relief fund, at least, that's what they told me.

Do people even realize, some of us KNOW, that Libya was basically the Clintons version of the Iraq invasion. ( That the main thing I found so absurd about the " Email Scandal", none of these media people touched on WHY THE EMBASSY WAS ATTACKED, cause then they'd have to delve into shit they really don't want out there see?..) Another oil grab, ( and gold,) not to mention they built an irrigation system that would eventually have had Africa able to supply its OWN PEOPLE WITH FOOD. But then they wouldn't be dependent on humanitarian aid, with all the strangling, interest created debt that keeps nations weak and dependent. So,.........THEY BOMBED IT INTO THE FUCKIN GROUND!!!!!!

MUTHAFUCK THE CLINTONS DUDE, LIKE ARE YALL SERIOUS? AND FUCKIN TRUMP. Y'all make this shit SOOOOOO SHALLOW, literally black and white....


Couldn't have them violating the rules of the "Petrol based Dollar", (Libya was preparing to sell their OWN oil, in their OWN currency, as opposed to the dollar, as well as basing their OWN currency on the VERY large amount of gold reserves they held, and NOT the Central bank Federal Reserve nonsense) the media will tell you exactly jack shit about ANY of this.
(And as much as I respect what the man accomplished as far as getting to where he did, this shit happened on Obamas watch, this is the shit that had Lupe Fiasco calling him a terrorist and getting kicked off the stage at the Obama inauguration party...)
This is a little background on why some, not all, but SOME of us didn't vote for fuckin Hillary.

One of my good friends explained it real well to me. He said Americans have a " Sports Teams" mentality when it comes to politics. They just want their team/guy to WIN. TO BEAT THE OTHER SIDE. Issues and Morality and Commen sense be damned. We get mad and throw tantrums when our team does bad. Some of us even stick with our team even if it's a perennial loser, some are fair weather fans. Many are armchair quarterbacks. But at the END OF THE DAY, all these " Adversaries", live in the same or similar neighborhoods. Drink at the same bars, eat at the same restaurants, send their kids to similar or the same schools. They go to dinner together and LAUGH ABOUT THIS SHIT. They INTERACT in the same circles basically, THEY ARE LARGLY THE FUCKIN SAME PEOPLE. You gotta be blind, deaf and dumb to not see this.

I just had to illustrate, not all this shit is based on surface level bullshit. Some of us DO ACTUALLY pay attention to what's going on.....

Another rant done, I met my quota for the day, lol.......

Sinaloa, Jalisco and the Beltran's are all active international. I know there are Zetas in Canada, and at least one very active cartel member on a darknetmarket that ships international, if that counts.

Have they actually managed to tie him to any acts of actual violence?

The US had to drop the murder charges to get him, only murder conspiracy.