Mexican drug lord El Chapo lands in New York to face charges

A plane carrying Guzman landed at a suburban airport. He was expected to make his first appearance in a federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Friday.

Mexico's Department of Foreign Relations announced Guzman was handed over to US authorities for transportation to the US earlier on Thursday.

The move came on the last full day of Democratic President Barack Obama's administration and a day before Republican Donald Trump's inauguration.

Guzman, who is in his late 50, was taken into custody by the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Ciudad Juarez, a border town across from El Paso, Texas.

He first escaped from prison in 2001 and spent more than a decade on the run before he was recaptured, only to break out again in 2015 via a mile-long tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.

The second escape was highly embarrassing for the government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, and his officials were keen to hand Guzman to the US afterwards.

A court denied Guzman's appeal and found his extradition was constitutional, the Mexican Department of Foreign Relations said.

In Mexico, Deputy Attorney General Alberto Elias Beltran said Guzman still faces formal charges in 10 other cases.

He said when Guzman completes his sentence in the US he will return to Mexico where the prosecutions will continue.

Guzman's lawyers had fought extradition since his 2016 recapture and said on Thursday the Mexican government sent him to the US to distract the public from nationwide protests over petrol prices.

"It was illegal. They didn't even notify us," lawyer Andres Granados said.

"They handled it politically to obscure the situation of the gas price hike. It's totally political."

Besides New York, Guzman faces charges in five other US jurisdictions, including San Diego, Chicago and Miami. He could face the possibility of life in a US prison if convicted.

An indictment in New York accuses him of running a massive drug operation that employed thousands of people, laundered billions of dollars in profits back to Mexico and used hit men to carry out murders, kidnappings and acts of torture.

After his recent escape, he became something of a folk legend for a segment of Mexico's population for his defiance of authorities.

He was immortalised in songs known as narco-corridos, ballads about the drug trade and drug bosses.

It was while on the run the second time, in autumn 2015, that he held a secret meeting with actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo.

The encounter was the subject of a lengthy article Penn published in Rolling Stone last January, just after Mexican marines re-arrested Guzman in the western state of Sinaloa.

In the interview, Guzman was unapologetic about his criminal activities, saying he had turned to drug trafficking aged 15 simply to survive.

"The only way to have money to buy food, to survive, is to grow poppy, marijuana, and at that age, I began to grow it, to cultivate it and to sell it. That is what I can tell you," he was quoted as saying.

The decision by Mexico to extradite one of its most prized prisoners to the US comes as Mr Trump has taken a tough stand on illegal immigration from that country, vowing to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it.

Mexican officials have repeatedly said they will not pay for a wall.