Mexico's Foreign Relations Department announced Guzman was handed over to U.S. authorities for transportation to the U.S. on Thursday, the last full day of President Barack Obama's administration and a day before Donald Trump is to be inaugurated. The U.S. Justice Department issued a statement confirming that Guzman was en route to the United States and expressed gratitude to Mexico for its cooperation. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration took custody of Guzman in Ciudad Juarez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas, and a plane carrying him departed for New York at 5:31 p.m. EST. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and agreed to give the information only if not quoted by name.
The convicted boss of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world's largest drug trafficking organizations, had been held most recently at a prison near Ciudad Juarez. He was recaptured a year ago after escaping from a second maximum-security prison through a tunnel dug to his cell. The 2015 escape was highly embarrassing for the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, and Mexican officials were seen as eager to hand the headache off to the United States afterward. Guzman's lawyers have fought extradition since his recapture. "It was illegal. They didn't even notify us," said lawyer Andres Granados, who accused the government of extraditing his client to distract from nationwide gasoline protests. "They handled it politically to obscure the situation of the gas price hike. It's totally political."
A handcuffed Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is made to face the press as he is escorted to a helicopter by Mexican soldiers and marines at a federal hangar in Mexico City. According to Mexico's Foreign Ministry, Guzman has been extradited to the United States on Thursday, Jan. 19 2017.
Guzman, who is in his late 50s, faces the possibility of life in a U.S. prison under multiple indictments in six jurisdictions around the United States, including New York, San Diego, Chicago and Miami. A federal indictment in the Eastern District of New York, where Guzman is expected to be prosecuted, accuses him of overseeing a trafficking cartel with thousands of members and billions of dollars in profits laundered back to Mexico. It says Guzman and other members of the Sinaloa cartel employed hit men who carried out murders, kidnappings and acts of torture. He was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury in July 2009. A superseding indictment was issued in May charging him and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada with a variety of drug, gun and money laundering charges as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.
The Mexican Foreign Relations Department's statement said a court had ruled against Guzman's appeal and found that his extradition would be constitutional. "The criminal Joaquin Guzman Loera was extradited this afternoon to face his pending legal cases," Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong tweeted. Guzman's first prison break was in 2001. He spent more than a decade at large before being captured in 2014, becoming something of a folk legend for a segment of Mexico's population for his defiance of authorities. He was immortalized in ballads known as "narco-corridos." The following year he broke out through the mile-long tunnel dug directly to the shower in his cell.
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