El Chapo’s extradition draws sighs
Chicago residents express relief
CHICAGO — In this city, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord called El Chapo, is also known simply as Public Enemy No. 1. The last time the Chicago Crime Commission bestowed that title, it was on Al Capone.
So when word came Thursday that Guzmán, who has been indicted in seven federal court districts, had been extradited and would face a judge inside a U.S. courtroom, there was widespread relief in Chicago. But there was also a tinge of regret in some corners that he would be answering charges first in New York and not here.
“That would be a great thing for Chicago to have this individual brought before a Chicago court, given his history and the atrocities committed here,” said Andrew Henning, general counsel for the Chicago Crime Commission, a nongovernmental policy group that gave Guzmán the “public enemy” label.
But Mr. Henning said that it was most important that Guzmán could no longer direct his network of drug traffickers and that he would be held accountable in a U.S. courtroom.
While the indictment in Chicago and those in other places, including New Hampshire, Florida, Texas and California, remain in effect, the decision to take Guzmán first to New York made it less likely he would ever answer the other charges, especially if he is convicted. On Friday, he pleaded not guilty to a New York indictment that included a provision that it would become void if Guzmán did not appear there first.
“With him in custody in the United States, successfully extradited,” Mr. Henning said, “hopefully the streets of Chicago are safer, the people of Chicago are safer.”
Guzmán, who for years eluded and then escaped from the authorities in Mexico, led a cartel that was accused of brutally dominating Chicago’s booming narcotics trade — a market that has been linked to the city’s problems of gangs and shootings.
Dennis A. Wichern, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Chicago, said that Guzmán’s cartel had “caused a lot of violence in this city” and that it was largely responsible for what he called an epidemic of heroin funneling into the city.
“We know about turf wars, feuds and what the drugs do on the other side — the devastation it does to the family members, the parent, the brother, the sister,” Mr. Wichern said.
Prosecutors have said for years that Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel used Chicago as a distribution center for broad swaths of the country. Once the drugs were safely across the border, distributors here would sell their illicit wares to smaller-scale dealers. Those drugs would then end up on the streets of Chicago and other northern cities like Minneapolis and New York.
“He’s a good businessman: He uses Chicago for the same reason that FedEx does,” said Thomas Shakeshaft, a former federal prosecutor here who helped lead the Guzmán indictment in Illinois, where Guzmán is accused of a vast conspiracy to distribute drugs and launder money.
Mr. Shakeshaft said this city’s central location, transportation network and size made it an attractive waypoint for traffickers. Federal prosecutors in Chicago said their investigation led to charges against 20 accused Sinaloa members and the seizure of $30.8 million, about 11 tons of cocaine, 265 kilograms of methamphetamine and 78 kilograms of heroin.