US Requests El Chapo's Son Be Extradited

Facts

• According to the Mexican government, the US has requested that Mexico extradite Ovidio Guzman — the son of jailed drug lord Joaquin Guzman, known as 'El Chapo.' Ovidio was arrested in January for allegedly helping run his father's infamous Sinaloa drug cartel.¹
• Ovidio was initially arrested in 2019 before security forces freed him after his cartel waged a war in response. He's accused by the US of helping oversee around a dozen methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa and conspiring to distribute cocaine and marijuana.²
• The 32-year-old — who also allegedly ordered hits on informants, a drug trafficker, and a singer who refused to perform at his wedding — secured a court order in January blocking his immediate extradition to the US, under which Washington was given until March 5 to present an official request.²
• Following the failed 2019 operation, the US offered $5M for information leading to Ovidio's arrest. The January arrest was also met with violence, leaving dozens dead.³
• The Mexican Attorney General must now file a request before the federal control judge in the state of Mexico and set a hearing date. Ovidio's lawyers are expected to try and block the extradition during the hearings at the Federal Criminal Justice Center in the coming days.⁴
• El Chapo is already facing a life sentence in the US after smuggling roughly 154 tons of cocaine, as well as heroin and methamphetamine, into the US over the course of 25 years. He and his associates earned an estimated $14B during that time.⁵

Sources: ¹Al Jazeera, ²CBS, ³Reuters, ⁴El pais and ⁵Sky news.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Brookings. There is a clear difference between the United State's relationship with Mexican cartels and that of the Mexican government. While Sinaloa is still the main distributor of illicit drugs in the US, cartel members know that they can't wage violent wars on the US military and police as they do south of the border. When the US government wants a drug lord, it will find him, arrest him, and put him behind bars for a long time.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Jacobin. The US media has an incredibly inaccurate and racialized perspective of the so-called 'drug war' in Mexico. Drug trafficking and violence in Mexico have much more to do with how criminal networks work in conjunction with the Mexican state than what amounts to occasional military operations against said networks. Even as the US and Mexican governments' response has expanded and militarized over the years, drug smuggling and use in the US have only increased.