Former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel has been handed over to US authorities

“El Chapo” Guzmán, one of Mexico’s most famous drug lords, is on his way to face criminal charges in the United States, the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs has announced.

Joaquín Guzmán, former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, was removed from his cell at a federal prison in Ciudad Juárez this afternoon in preparation for extradition to the U.S.

A statement released by the Foreign Affairs Secretariat said a court decided today to reject a request for an amparo, or legal protection, against extradition.

“. . . today, the government of the republic handed over Mr. Guzmán to the authorities of the Unites States of America,” the statement said.

The newspaper Milenio reported that the former cartel boss had been transferred from Cefereso No. 9 in Juárez to that city’s international airport to be flown to the U.S.

CNN reported that it had been told by a U.S. official that Mexican authorities had planned to hand Guzmán over before tomorrow’s inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump.

Government officials said last fall they expected the hand-over to take place early this year. January marks the first anniversary of Guzman’s capture in Sinaloa, six months after a spectacular escape through a 1.5-kilometer tunnel from the Altiplano federal prison in the State of México.

He had been in custody since February 14 when he was arrested in Mazatlán.

In the U.S. he will face charges of money laundering, drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder.

Stories from our archives that you might enjoy </s> MEXICO CITY — State police have detained and disarmed the entire police force of a town in western Mexico where a mayoral candidate was killed on Thursday.

Video of the detention aired by local media showed uniformed officers hitting each other as gunshots go off in the background.

The Michoacán state police force said “all the officers of the Ocampo municipal police force were detained for [an] internal affairs investigation.”

In statements on its Twitter account Sunday, the state police department did not directly tie the detentions to the Thursday killing of Fernando Angeles Juarez, the mayoral candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. He was killed in Ocampo, Michoacán on Thursday.

Mexican soldiers guard the funeral of Ocampo municipality Mayor and candidate for the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Fernando Angeles, in Ocampo, Michoacan State, Mexico, on June 21, 2018.Raul Tinoco / AFP – Getty Images

Angeles Juárez’s is just one of at least 18 candidates killed so far in campaigns leading up to the July 1 elections. Just last week, another mayoral candidate was also gunned down last week in the conflict-ridden rural town of Aguililla in the western state of Michoacan.

Michoacán Gov. Silvano Aureoles vowed to catch those responsible for killing candidate Omar Gómez Lucatero.

Almost all of the 18 candidates killed across the country so far have been running for local posts in the July 1 elections, which will also decide the presidency, governorships and Congress. Other politicians who were considering a run have been killed before they could even register as candidates. The killings have particularly hit states like Michoacán, Guerrero and Oaxaca.

Ocampo, all 28 police officers, were detained after participating in a revolt when they prevented the arrest of the director of Public Security who will be investigated for his probable responsibility in the killing of the candidate Fernando Angeles Juarez.Ivan Villanueva / EPA

Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said that in part, the level of violence against candidates can be explained by “simple mathematics:” There are far more elections being held simultaneously than ever before in Mexico. With more than 3,400 local, state and federal posts at stake, there are more than 15,000 candidates hitting the campaign trail.

“Secondly, this speaks to the changes in criminal groups,” Hope said, noting that drug cartels have expanded into extortion, fuel theft and other crimes. “With the evolution of crime, it becomes much more important to gain control over territory, over local governments.”

In crimes like fuel theft, for example, local police can be valuable allies to act as look outs or cover up for illegal pipeline taps and illicit fuel warehouses. And some gangs have even taken to extorting money from local governments by forcing them to sign inflated public works contracts.

Those concerns could lead the gangs to kill a candidate who rivals their favorite, or to kill candidates who refuse their demands.

Finally, Hope noted, “there has been a breakdown in the management of disputes,” largely in rural areas, where turf wars between rival gangs have heated up, even as the government has become over-extended and less able to intervene. </s> TOLUCA, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexico's ruling party fended off a leftist challenger in a major state election seen as a test run for a presidential vote next year, propelling the country's peso currency to its strongest level since U.S. President Donald Trump was elected.

But the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) 3 percentage-point margin of victory in the central State of Mexico, the country's most populous, was a close call for President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose party has ruled it for nearly nine decades.

A narrow defeat will not end, or even dampen, the aspirations of leftists led by veteran Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an early favorite for next year's presidential race as the contender of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party. His young party accused the PRI of vote buying and other dirty tricks, and may launch legal challenges in the weeks to come.

With nearly 98 percent of returns in from polling booths, PRI candidate Alfredo del Mazo had 34 percent of the vote compared with 31 percent for MORENA candidate Delfina Gomez.

"We are going to challenge (the results) at many booths where illegal returns were sent, and we believe that with this we could reverse the outcome," said MORENA secretary general Yeidckol Polevnsky.

In other statewide elections, also held on Sunday, the PRI lost in the western state of Nayarit and narrowly won in Coahuila, which borders the United States.

"The PRI struggled to hold on to the gubernatorial seat in both the State of Mexico and Coahuila, which have traditionally been very favorable electoral battlegrounds, and suffered significant losses in Nayarit and in the municipal election in Veracruz," said Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos.

"This does not bode well for the PRI in the presidential election next year," Ramos added.

Still, markets reacted positively to the news that the PRI was bound to retain power in Mexico State.

The Mexican peso MXN=MXN=D2 gained nearly 2 percent in Monday morning trade, on the setback for Lopez Obrador, a sign of ongoing market distrust of the combative leader who has opposed economic liberalization in Mexico.

The result also gave a boost to OHL Mexico (OHLMEX.MX), the Mexican unit of Spanish construction firm OHL, whose share price rose by as much as 9.5 percent.

Investors fear that Lopez Obrador and other opposition leaders, who have accused OHL Mexico of helping to finance the PRI in the State of Mexico, could go after the firm's lucrative contracts if they are elected to power. OHL Mexico has rejected the allegations.

The PRI is battling widespread anger at corruption and rising violent crime under Pena Nieto as the countdown starts for the July 2018 presidential election.

Lopez Obrador has alleged fraud in past elections, and he vowed to scrutinize the results from every voting booth.

"We will never resort to violence, but we are going to firmly defend this country's democracy," he said in a video message. Gomez, the candidate, said she would not protest the result on the streets.

Known as AMLO, the silver-haired politician earned the ire of many Mexico City residents after the 2006 presidential vote when he brought parts of the capital to a standstill with mass protests, saying he had been robbed of victory by center-right candidate Felipe Calderon.

"The lengths that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador goes to challenge the result will have an important bearing on his presidential candidacy," said Nicholas Watson of Teneo Intelligence.

Prosecutors are probing the circumstances of piles of pig heads dumped on Saturday near MORENA offices and at polling stations in several municipalities.

Also under investigation were telephone threats and fake electoral literature warning of attacks - tactics used to dissuade people from voting.

Encompassing many populous neighborhoods on the edge of Mexico City, the State of Mexico is home to one in eight Mexican voters and it has long been a source of strength and financing for the PRI.

Del Mazo, however, had a poor showing compared to his predecessors despite his family's dominance in the state's politics. He secured barely half the share of vote and a fraction of the margin of victory that the current governor won six years ago with the backing of Pena Nieto, himself a former governor of the state whose own popularity has since plunged.

Failing to put a stop to corruption scandals and struggling to tame brutal gang violence has cost the party dearly.

Mexico's attorney general's office said on Sunday a former state governor for the PRI, Roberto Borge, had been arrested at Mexico's request in Panama on corruption charges. Borge, an ex-governor of Quintana Roo, encompassing the resort of Cancun, has previously denied wrongdoing.

Lopez Obrador's State of Mexico campaign was hurt by a failure to ally with others in the opposition and references by rivals to crisis-hit Venezuela, which the PRI argues mirrors his economic model. He denies the accusation.

The campaigner has opposed the opening of Mexico's energy sector to private capital, a key reform under Pena Nieto, but no longer vows to reverse it.

Linking Lopez Obrador to late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has helped rivals beat him to the top job in two previous bids at the presidency.

Victory for Lopez Obrador in 2018 could push Mexico in a more nationalist direction at a time of tension with the United States, with U.S. President Donald Trump riling Mexicans with threats to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement and build a border wall. </s> Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman arrives in New York after his extradition from Mexico, January 19, 2017. Thomson Reuters

CHICAGO (AP) — Top US Drug Enforcement Administration officials will unveil new plans to combat Mexican drug cartels Wednesday in Chicago alongside members of the Mexican government and federal police, DEA officials told The Associated Press.

The announcement at a joint news conference will be a public display of bilateral cooperation amid ongoing tensions over President Donald Trump's trade and immigration policies, including over his vow to build a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile US-Mexican border.

The new plans include putting greater emphasis on attacking cartels' financial infrastructure. Plans also call for a new enforcement group based in Chicago that will concentrate on international investigations of cartels.

Matthew G. Donahue, director for the DEA's North and Central American Region, told the AP on Tuesday that the US wants to rely more on changes in the Mexican legal system in recent years designed to make evidence gathering and prosecutions more efficient.

Municipal police stand guard on the beach in front of the Blue Parrot club, a day after a deadly early-morning shooting there, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, January 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

"The new game plan is ... pick up the speed and arrest more people, faster," Donahue said. "That's what we're really trying to push — the cooperation that we currently have with Mexico to be a little more efficient, a little bit more aggressive."

He said the U.S. also intends to do more to help stem the flow of guns into Mexico that contributes to deadly violence in the country. Donahue said around 31,000 people were killed in Mexico last year, a new record for a single year.

The DEA didn't immediately name the Mexican officials who will attend the event in Chicago.

Donahue said the targeting of top cartel brass will remain a core component of bids to disrupt the powerful syndicates. The biggest trophy in this long-standing kingpin strategy was Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, extradited to New York in 2017 to face US trafficking charges.

Sinaloa has dominated the drug supply to many US cities, though the takedown of Guzman lessened its influence. Among up-and-coming cartels cutting into Sinaloa drug-market share is the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, led by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as "El Mencho."

Police officers, members of a team known as "Condores," stand by the door of the helicopter during a patrol of the city, part of a new strategy to combat the crime in Mexico City, August 3, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Last year, a DEA drug-threat report called CJNG "one of the most powerful and fastest growing in Mexico and the United States." It said the cartel's primary product is methamphetamine, with main US distribution hubs in Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta.

A 2018 report by the University of San Diego's Justice in Mexico said Guzman's takedown "dramatically reshaped the landscape of Mexican organized crime," including by clearing the way for Cervantes and the CJNG to expand.

The same report urged policymakers not to rely as much on a strategy of going after kingpins and extraditing them to the US, saying it often had a "hydra-effect," in which a new series of drug lords emerge and without reducing the overall menace of cartels.

Donahue defended the strategy to date, saying the US and Mexico will "always go after the top dog" in a cartel and "always go after the entire organization."
Quirino Ordaz Coppel is sworn in as Governor of the Mexican state of Sinaloa.