'El Chapo' Extradited To The US: Drug Kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera Flying To New York To Face Charges

Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera was in the process of being extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges for leading a global cocaine ring on Thursday afternoon. Guzmán was at an airport in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez in advance of his travel to New York City, according to a tweet from a local reporter.

While Guzmán was facing a host of drug charges including conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine and marijuana, the murder charges were dropped by U.S. authorities as a way to help expedite the extradition process, the Guardian reported in May.

While the federal case was expected to be tried in a Brooklyn court, Guzmán's arraignment was scheduled to held in Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, according to a local New York City reporter. It was not immediately clear when the arraignment would take place, but it could be as early as Friday.

The terms of the extradition were not immediately clear, but the New York Times reported early last year that the U.S. would most likely have had to agree to not pursue death penalty charges against him for the extradition to take place.

A Mexican judge cleared the way for Guzmán's extradition to happen by rejecting two of the five injunctions filed by the drug lord's legal team back in October. The other three injunctions had already been rejected by the same judge.

Guzmán had managed to escape from a Mexican prison in 2015 by way of a secret tunnel before he was ultimately captured and arrested six months later on Jan. 8, 2016. He previously launched his first jailbreak by hiding in a laundry cart that was sneaked out of the prison back in 2001. He was later captured in 2014 before finally being arrested this latest time.