MEXICO CITY — Mexico mounted an all-out manhunt Sunday for its most powerful drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who escaped from a maximum-security prison through a 1-mile tunnel from a small opening in the shower area of his cell, according to the country’s top security official.
The elaborate underground escape route, built allegedly without the detection of authorities, allowed Guzman to do what Mexican officials promised would never happen after his recapture last year — slip out of one of the country’s most secure penitentiaries for the second time.
“This represents without a doubt an affront to the Mexican state,” said President Enrique Peña Nieto, speaking during a previously scheduled trip to France. “But I also have confidence in the institutions of the Mexican state … that they have the strength and determination to recapture this criminal.”
If Guzman is not caught immediately, the drug lord likely will be back in full command and control of the Sinaloa cartel in 48 hours, said Michael S. Vigil, a retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief of international operations.
“We may never find him again,” he said. “All the accolades that Mexico has received in their counterdrug efforts will be erased by this one event.”
Thirty employees from various parts of the Altiplano prison, 55 miles west of Mexico City, have been taken in for questioning, according to the federal attorney general’s office.
A manhunt began immediately late Saturday for Guzman, whose cartel is believed to control most of the major crossing points for drugs at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Guatemala’s Interior Ministry said a special task force of police and soldiers were watching Mexico’s southern border for any sign of the fugitive drug lord.
To the north, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a statement offering “any assistance that may help support his swift recapture,”
Guzman was last seen about 9 p.m. in the shower area of his cell, according to a statement from the National Security Commission. After a time, he was lost by the prison’s security camera surveillance network. Upon checking his cell, authorities found it empty and a 20-by-20-inch hole near the shower.
Guzman’s escape is a major embarrassment to the Peña Nieto administration, which had received plaudits for its aggressive approach to top drug lords. Since the government took office in late 2012, Mexican authorities have killed or nabbed six of them, including Guzman.
Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. as well as Mexico and was on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted list.
After Guzman was arrested Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S. said it would file an extradition request, although it’s not clear if that happened.
At the time, the Mexican government vehemently denied the need to extradite Guzman, even as many expressed fears he would escape, as he did in 2001 while serving a 20-year sentence in the country’s other top-security prison, Puente Grande, in the western state of Jalisco.
Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told the AP this year that the U.S. would get Guzman in “about 300 or 400 years” after he served time for all his crimes in Mexico.
He dismissed concerns that Guzman could escape a second time. That risk “does not exist,” Murillo Karam said.
“It wasn’t overconfidence; it was Mexican judicial nationalism,” said Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “First he had to pay his debt in Mexico and then in the U.S. Now it’s very evident that it was a mistake.”
It was difficult to believe that such an elaborate structure could have been built without the detection of authorities, although photographs show the prison surrounded by construction, with large open ditches and metal drainage pipes that could have camouflaged such a project.
Guzman dropped by ladder into a hole 30 feet deep that connected with a tunnel about 5½ feet high that was ventilated and had lighting.
Authorities also found tools, oxygen tanks and a motorcycle adapted to run on rails that they believe was used to carry dirt out and tools in during the construction.
The tunnel terminated in a half-built house in a farm field, according to radio transmissions among authorities, who cordoned off the structure that sits atop a small rise with a clear view of the prison.
Guzman’s cartel is known for building elaborate tunnels beneath the Mexico-U.S. border to transport cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana, with ventilation, lighting and even rail cars to move products.
He was first caught by authorities in Guatemala in 1993, extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison on drug-trafficking charges.
Many accounts say he escaped in 2001 in a laundry cart, although there have been several versions of how he got away. What is clear is that he had help from prison guards, who were prosecuted and convicted.
Guzman finally was recaptured in February 2014 after eluding authorities for days across his home state of Sinaloa.
Born 58 years ago, according to Interpol, he and allies took control of the Sinaloa faction when a larger syndicate began to fall apart in 1989.
During his first stint as a fugitive, Guzman transformed himself into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. His fortune was estimated at more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which listed him among the “World’s Most Powerful People,” ranked above the presidents of France and Venezuela.
He finally was tracked to a modest beachside high-rise in the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlan, where he had been hiding with his wife and twin daughters. He was captured in the early morning of Feb. 22, 2014, without a shot fired.
Even after his 2014 capture, Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel empire continues to stretch throughout North America and reaches as far as Europe and Australia. The cartel has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through parts of Mexico for the past decade, taking an estimated 100,000 lives or more.
Detentions of top alleged drug chiefs
• Mexican marines capture Abigael Gonzalez Valencia, known as “El Cuini,” in Puerto Vallarta. He was allegedly the financial operator for the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco, a former Sinaloa ally that has grown rapidly into one of Mexico’s most powerful drug-trafficking organizations.
• Feb. 27, 2015: Federal police capture Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, one of world’s most-wanted alleged drug lords who once terrorized Michoacan state as leader of Knights Templar cartel.
• Oct. 9, 2014: Officials announce arrest of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, purported leader of Juarez cartel.
• Oct. 1, 2014: Mexico announces capture of Hector Beltran Leyva, alias “The H” and “The Engineer,” who allegedly became head of Beltran Leyva cartel after brother Arturo died in a 2009 gunbattle with troops.
• March 9, 2014: Soldiers kill Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, leader of La Familia Michoacana and later Knights Templar, while he was riding a mule in remote Michoacan mountains. The government had wrongly claimed that he was killed in December 2010.
• Feb. 22, 2014: Mexican and U.S. officials capture world’s most powerful drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman of the Sinaloa cartel, in the beach resort of Mazatlan.
• July 15, 2013: Officials in northern Mexico capture Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, alias “Z-40,” alleged leader of the Zetas cartel.
• Oct. 7, 2012: Marines kill Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, founder and top leader of the Zetas. His body later is stolen from a funeral home.
• Sept. 12, 2012: Marines capture purported top Gulf Cartel leader Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, alias “El Coss.”
• July 29, 2010: Soldiers raid a house in the city of Zapopan and kill Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, a senior leader of the Sinaloa cartel.
• Dec. 16, 2009: Marines kill Arturo Beltran Leyva, leader of Beltran Leyva cartel, in shootout in Cuernavaca.
