Mexico extradites drug lord 'El Chapo' to US on eve of Trump inauguration

Mexico extradited its drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to New York on Jan. 19, likely ending a decades-long criminal career that included two jail breaks and a lead role in a national drug war, the day before Donald Trump assumes the U.S. presidency. 

Mexican officials said the timing of the move was both a last-minute gift to outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama and an olive branch to Trump, who has regularly insulted Mexico and threatened to tear up the NAFTA trade agreement that underpins its economy. 

Guzman, 59, arrived in a small jet at Long Island's MacArthur Airport after nightfall and left in a column of vehicles. Later a police convoy believed to be carrying the kingpin arrived at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center, a maximum-security federal prison, with helicopters swooping overhead, Reuters reported. 

At least three female inmates chanted "Chapo! Chapo!" at the top of their voices from their barred cell window. 

One of the world's most wanted drug kingpins until he was captured a year ago, Guzman busted out of a high-security penitentiary in central Mexico six months earlier through a mile-long tunnel, his second dramatic prison escape. 

After Guzman slipped out of his cell through a tunnel fitted with a motorbike on rails in July 2015, Trump said on Twitter he "would kick his ass" as president. 

The extradition of El Chapo, or Shorty, followed a federal court decision on Jan. 19 rejecting a legal challenge by his lawyers against extradition. It came 16 years to the day after the first jail break, removing the lingering fear he would again outsmart the Mexican government. 

Alberto Elias Beltran, Mexico's assistant attorney general for international affairs, denied the extradition...