El Chapo Takes New York: Everything You Need To Know

NEW YORK, NY — Donald who? The most notorious drug dealer in the history of the world, Sinaloa Cartel captain Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, 59, touched down at Long Island's MacArthur Airport with a massive posse of uniformed escorts late Thursday night — the first of many, many nights he'll spend in New York during his long-awaited Brooklyn federal court trial, which could last for years, prosecutors said Friday.

It's taken more than a decade of work from a slew of local and federal government agencies to get him here. But now that El Chapo is officially a transplant New Yorker, here's everything you need to know about your famous new neighbor.

(We'll be updating this post with all the latest and dirtiest El Chapo details as we receive them, so check back — or sign up here to receive Patch's email alerts on El Chapo and other local news in your NYC neighborhood.)

Where He's Living

El Chapo has spent the past year at Mexico's Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 — the same desolate, high-security prison from which he previously escaped via high-tech underground tunnel in July 2015.

His new digs will be much more cosmopolitan, but no less severe. For the time being, according to the DEA, he'll be living in isolation at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), a bleak, gray tower located at Park Row and Pearl Street in the area of Lower Manhattan's financial district dedicated to government buildings. (Pictured below.)

As for the possibility of another prison break from the world's most cunning prison breaker: "What happened in other countries will not occur here," Brooklyn's U.S. Attorney, Robert Capers, said Friday in a low-key jab at Mexican authorities. "He will remain in United States custody."

The MCC has been called a "hellhole," a "Guantánamo in New York" and the worst prison in America. In fact, one prisoner in solitary confinement said he found Guantánamo to be “more pleasant” and “more relaxed” than the MCC.

Some former prisoners and their attorneys recently told The Intercept that the MCC's extreme isolation and omnipresent monitoring can make inmates go so insane, they'll admit to almost anything. “Anecdotally, we’ve seen increased deterioration over a period of time, especially in a pre-trial situation," attorney Peter Quijano said. "It seems like a punishment and it affects their ability to assist in their defense.”

El Chapo will be one of around 800 people incarcerated at MCC — among them some of New York's most ruthless murderers, drug bosses and terrorists. (And, previously, Bernie Madoff.)

What's On His Schedule

Aside from hanging out at the MCC, El Chapo really only has one thing to do while in New York: Make repeated appearances at the tall, shapely federal courthouse at 225 Cadman Plaza East in Downtown Brooklyn. (Pictured below.)

Streets outside the courthouse were teeming with TV news vans and NYPD vehicles early Friday morning, in anticipation of the Sinaloa kingpin's first day in court.

El Chapo was arraigned at 2 p.m. Friday on the building's fourth floor. He entered a plea of "not guilty" to 17 charges.

In the courtroom, handcuffed and dressed in a dark blue prison uniform, El Chapo listened while a translator repeated the charges against him in Spanish. In response, he mumbled short phrases — "Si, Señor," "Gracias," etc. After 15 minutes or so, the arraignment was over, and he was escorted out of the courthouse through a secret, high-security passageway off limits to the public.

El Chapo will next appear in court Feb. 3.

Anyone who wants to attend his future court dates will have to squeeze into the courtroom on a "first come, first serve" basis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney said.

His constant trips across the East River could also end up being a real headache for commuters: The Brooklyn Bridge will have to be closed while authorities transport the drug lord to court, according to CNN.

Who He Is

In short, the most prolific drug trafficker in history. (Allegedly.)

El Chapo's extensive network of dealers, runners, spies and hitmen — operating across more than a dozen countries — is accused of bringing around 200 metric tons of cocaine, much of it produced in Columbia by other notorious cartels like Pablo Escobar's, into the U.S. from the 1980s through the 2000s.

The Sinaloa Cartel also trafficked heroin, weed and meth, prosecutors say — but cocaine was their bread and butter.

"Nowhere was the devastating impact of the introduction of cocaine into the United States felt more acutely than in New York and Miami in the 1980s, which became central hubs of cocaine distribution and money laundering," the Brooklyn indictment says. "Along with the proliferation of drugs into our communities, came an onslaught of violent crime."

Here's a small portion of the cartel's product load, via the U.S. Attorney's Office:

As with many of history's elusive crime bosses, El Chapo has also become something of a folk hero. After all, this is a guy who came up from a poor family in rural Sinaloa to become Mexico's most wanted — and slipperiest — criminal, worth billions of dollars and not afraid to pull out his gold- and diamond-encrusted handgun and shoot any man in the forehead who came in the way of his enterprise.

And stories of his jailbreaks are the stuff of Mexican folklore.

El Chapo first escaped from Mexican prison in 2001, as the story goes, by bribing jail guards to look away as a janitor wheeled him out in a laundry cart. For the next 13 years, he was on the run — narrowly evading the feds every time they staged a raid. He was finally recaptured and rejailed in 2014, but soon escaped again, this time through a mile-long underground tunnel stretching from a prison shower stall to a nearby construction site. The tunnel was "more than two feet wide and more than five feet high, tall enough for him to walk standing upright, and was burrowed more than 30 feet underground," according to the New York Times.

Mexican authorities finally got their hands on the nation's most-wanted man for good in January 2016, not long after his high-profile meeting and Rolling Stone interview with Sean Penn and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo (the kingpin's longtime crush).

But "Guzman's story is not one of a do-gooder or a Robin Hood," U.S. Attorney Capers said Friday.

Instead, Capers said, "He's a man known for no other life but a life of crime, violence, death and destruction, and now he'll have to answer to that."

Why He's Here

"To face his long date with destiny, and that is justice here in the Eastern District of New York," in the words of Brooklyn's U.S. Attorney.

Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for El Chapo — but not the death penalty, as per an agreement with the Mexican government.

They're also seeking to seize $14 billion in the drug lord's assets. (If they can find them.)

Brooklyn was one of a handful of major American cities whose courts drew up extensive indictments against El Chapo in the past decade, based on his criminal activity in different parts of the U.S. But in the end, the Department of Justice chose to take Brooklyn's indictment — which, in its current form, has actually been fused with Miami's indictment — to trial.

"After an exhaustive review of all the various cases, it was determined that the partnership [between Brooklyn, Miami and federal drug investigators] had the most forceful punch in the way of the case," Capers said Friday morning.

"Twelve seasoned narcotics prosecutors" at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, as well as "40 or so witnesses who provide an intricate look into this organization and the devastation that was wrought," will help bolster Brooklyn's case, Capers said.

Read the full indictment below.

Lead photo via the Associated Press