New York news outlets are claiming drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera will end up going to a federal courthouse there in that city. The news came just days after the famed drug lord was moved to a prison in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua where he awaits extradition.
As Breitbart Texas previously reported, the famed kingpin El Chapo has been moved to a prison in Ciudad Juarez putting him that much closer to the United States. He is facing multiple indictments on drug trafficking offenses. The U.S. Department of Justice has requested his extradition, which is something that his lawyers had initially favored but appear to have since begun to fight by placing multiple motions in the Mexican court system aimed at keeping the capo from setting foot in an American prison. If convicted in the U.S., Guzman could be facing at multiple life-terms in prison.
This week, the New York Post cited unnamed “law enforcement sources”, claiming that Guzman would likely be headed to the federal court in Brooklyn, New York first. Neither U.S. Department of Justice or the U.S. Attorney’s Office responded to the Post’s questions about the extradition. Breitbart Texas also reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice about the likely extradition; no response was received at the time of publication.
Despite the news about El Chapo being that much closer to extradition, residents along the Mexican border remain skeptical about the drug lord ever setting foot in an American prison.
“They moved him to a border city where his people operate, why not just give him the key to the cell,” Esteban Herrera asked jokingly in Spanish as he sipped coffee at a local restaurant in the border city of McAllen with some of his friends. “The government of Mexico is so corrupt that I am just waiting for the day when you all will report that he escaped once again.”
The lack of trust in the Mexican justice system on the part of Herrera and Rodriguez comes at a time when Mexican drug cartels have been able to amass enough power and political clout to achieve complete impunity. As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, Guzman Loera has been able to escape from two of Mexico’s maximum security federal prisons. In the most recent escape, the drug lord was able to crawl through a mile long tunnel to freedom from where he spent months on the run before his third capture. Since the time of the escape, Mexican authorities have been shamed into arresting prison guards and officials who were complicit in Guzman’s escape.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.