The Mexican government has publicly granted the extradition of that country’s most famous drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, to the United States. On Friday, Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretariat (SRE) announced that they had personally notified Guzman inside a federal prison in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua about the extradition agreement.
According to a prepared statement, the SRE had made sure that the U.S. government would not seek the death penalty against Guzman once extradited.
As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, two federal judges, had previously moved forward the extradition process. Guzman’s legal team can still try other legal measures to delay or halt the extradition.
The SRE stated that Guzman would be extradited to face charges in the Western District of Texas where he is wanted on organized criminal activity, drug trafficking, money laundering, weapons smuggling and murder.
Guzman is also wanted in the Southern District of California on multiple drug trafficking offenses.
The murder charge against Guzman comes from the kidnapping and murder of Rafael Morales Valencia, Jaime Morales Valencia and Guadalupe Morales Arreola on May 10, 2010 in Ciudad Juarez. The murder was carried out by members of Guzman’s cartel during a time when the Sinaloa Cartel was engaged in a violent turf war with their rival the Juarez Cartel.
On Friday afternoon, after the announcement of the SRE was made, U.S. Representative Filemon Vela welcomed the measure but also called once again for Mexico to turn over two former governors from the border state of Tamaulipas who remain fugitives of the U.S. Department of Justice.
“The relative speed and efficiency with which U.S. and Mexican officials acted demonstrate what is possible when our two countries work together,” Vela said. “I urge the Attorney General and the Secretary of State to apply a similar level of effort with the Mexican government to bring indicted former Tamaulipas Governors Tomas Yarrington Ruvalcaba and Eugenio Hernandez Flores to justice.”
As Breitbart Texas previously reported, Yarrington and Hernandez have both been formally charged in U.S. Federal court with laundering cartel bribes from Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Yarrington has also been charged with drug conspiracy charges in connection with the Gulf cartel, the Los Zetas cartel and the Beltran Leyva cartel.
Despite being a Democrat member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Vela has been very critical in the past of both the Mexican government and the Obama administration in the way they have been handling border violence and Mexico’s rampant corruption.
As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, Vela had called for Guzman’s immediate extradition in January stating that “Anything short of immediate extradition to the United States shows no real intent from Mexico to address drug trafficking and organized criminal activity,” Vela said to Breitbart Texas.
Last year, Vela and U.S. Republican Representative Michael McCaul had called out the U.S State Department for inaction in pressuring the Mexican government to arrest and extradite Yarrington and Hernandez.
Despite being a fugitive of U.S. authorities, Hernandez has been making multiple public appearances all over Tamaulipas promoting the campaign of gubernatorial candidate Baltazar Hinojosa who is from the same party, the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
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