Mexican Judge Rules That El Chapo Can Be Extradited to the US to Face Drug Charges

A Mexican judge has ruled that Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, a leader of the Sinaloa cartel, can be extradited to the United States to face drug trafficking charges, the country's federal court authority said Monday.

A source at the Mexican Foreign Ministry told Reuters, however, that nothing was likely to happen with Guzmán's case for weeks.

Early Saturday morning, Mexican authorities moved Chapo to a high security prison in the northern city of Juárez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Guzmán faces a variety of charges, including drug trafficking, money laundering, conspiracy, and murder, in federal district courts in Texas, California, New York, and Florida.

The head of Chapo's legal team, José Refugio Rodríguez, told VICE News on Saturday that he had no indication that the kingpin's extradition is imminent.

Rodríguez said that, as far as he is aware, court injunctions that block Mexican authorities from sending Chapo to the US to face trial remain in place.

"Legally they should not have transferred him," the attorney said. "They cannot extradite him now."

Mexican authorities said in a statement on Saturday morning that the decision to move Chapo was due to "construction work" in order to "reinforce security" at the maximum-security Altiplano prison, about 50 miles west of Mexico City. The drug lord escaped from the facility through a mile-long tunnel on July 11, 2015, and was returned there after he was recaptured in January. He escaped from another prison in 2001 and remained on the loose for more than a decade.

The government statement did not mention extradition.

Chapo's second recapture caused a media storm that only grew after it was revealed that he held a secret rendezvous with Hollywood actor Sean Penn and telenovela star Kate del Castillo.

El Chapo is currently in a maximum-security prison in Juárez, the border city that from 2008 and 2010 held the dubious title of "the most violent city in the world" because of its staggering homicide rate. The bloodshed was due in large part to a turf war between El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel and the local Juárez Cartel.

The Juarez prison rated as the worst of the country's 21 federal facilities in a 2015 report by the Mexican government's National Human Rights Commission.

Earlier this year, Chapo's lawyers and wife had repeatedly complained that he was being mistreated in the Altiplano prison, primarily through sleep deprivation that his representatives claimed was causing his blood pressure to soar dangerously high. At one point, the drug lord's lawyer said the conditions were so bad his client wanted to be extradited to the US.

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