Video grab released on January 27, 2016 by Mexican General Attorney office, showing Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in Altiplano maximum security federal prison in Almoloya de Juarez, State of Mexico (AFP Photo/PGR) More 
 
 Mexico City (AFP) - The Mexican authorities transferred the notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to a prison in Ciudad Juarez on the US border Saturday morning in a surprise move, officials said. 
 
 Despite speculation, Guzman's transfer had "absolutely nothing" to do with his possible extradition or deportation to the United States -- where he faces extradition requests by courts in California and Texas for homicide and drug trafficking -- Eduardo Sanchez, spokesman for the president's office, told AFP. 
 
 The authorities said they moved Guzman to prevent any escape attempt during construction to strengthen his maximum-security prison in Altiplano, 90 kilometers (55 miles) from the capital Mexico City. 
 
 Considered one of the world's most powerful drug bosses, Guzman has staged two dramatic escapes from maximum-security prisons, including from Altiplano. 
 
 He arrived at the airport in Ciudad Juarez at dawn, heavily guarded by some 150 federal police officers who had arrived earlier in three planes. 
 
 Mexico did not warn the US authorities before Guzman's transfer, a US government official told AFP. 
 
 The move "surprised everyone," he said, adding that the transfer had nothing to do with the extradition process. 
 
 Guzman's lawyer Jose Refugio Rodriguez said the move is "illegal" because his defense team has launched "processes to stop him being transferred from one place to another." 
 
 - Secure Jail - 
 
 A helicopter transferred Guzman from the airport to a prison in the south of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. 
 
 Although not classified as a maximum-security prison, it has a section for highly dangerous prisoners that is "one of the safest," a National Security Commission source said. 
 
 Military soldiers guard the prison, and the road leading to the facility is under especially heavy protection, Mexican media reported. 
 
 The former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel -- one of Mexico's most powerful -- Guzman staged a spectacular jailbreak in July 2015, when he escaped through a hole in his jail cell's shower that led to a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel leading outside. 
 
 He was captured in January after months on the run in a colorful episode involving a Mexican soap opera actress and the US film star Sean Penn, who met with the drug boss in hiding. 
 
 In 2001, Guzman is believed to have hidden in a laundry basket when he escaped from another maximum security prison in Puente Grande in western Jalisco state, where he was imprisoned since 1993. 
 
 The authorities began the process of deporting him to the United States shortly after his capture in January. 
 
 President Enrique Pena Nieto has said the extradition would take place "as soon as possible." 
 
 Guzman fought the process until March, when he asked his lawyers to stop their efforts because conditions at his prison were intolerable. 
 
 He is willing to plead guilty to charges in the United States in return for a lighter sentence and confinement at a medium-security prison, his lawyer Rodriguez said. 
 
 Earlier this year, Guzman's lawyers said he was being held incommunicado and that guards were preventing him from sleeping more than two hours at a time, but said more recently that conditions had markedly improved. 
 
 The prison authorities in Altiplano had already made improvements at the facility, reinforcing points of access and perimeter security, adding cameras and monitoring command centers and prison conditions. 
 
 Guzman is accused of crimes including smuggling tons of drugs into the United States by boat, submarine, airplane and an extensive network of tunnels under the border. 
 
 A number of US jurisdictions, including New York, are vying to prosecute him. 
 
 Mexican officials have said the extradition process may take a year or more. ||||| MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican judge has ruled that drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman can be extradited to face charges in the United States, the country’s federal court authority said on Monday, days after he was moved to a prison near the U.S. border. 
 
 Recaptured drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted by soldiers at the hangar belonging to the office of the Attorney General in Mexico City, Mexico January 8, 2016. REUTERS/Henry Romero/File Photo 
 
 On Saturday, Guzman was transferred to a prison in Ciudad Juarez on Mexico’s northern border and a senior Mexican security official said the kingpin’s extradition was in motion and would happen by mid-year. 
 
 Guzman, boss of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, was for years the world’s most wanted drug trafficker until his capture by Mexican Marines in February 2014. He then embarrassed the government by escaping from prison through a tunnel last July. 
 
 The government recaptured him in January and President Enrique Pena Nieto said soon afterwards he had taken steps to ensure Guzman was extradited as soon as possible. 
 
 He faces charges ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder in cities that include Chicago, Miami and New York. 
 
 Juan Pablo Badillo, one of Guzman’s lawyers, said his client’s legal situation was still being processed and that to extradite him now would be a violation of his human rights. 
 
 Badillo listed nine appeals pending against Guzman’s extradition. However, government officials have said in private the decision to extradite the drug lord is essentially a political call dependent on the president. 
 
 A government source said on Monday nothing was likely to happen to Guzman for weeks. 
 
 Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday that it had received notification of the judge’s decision, adding that once it received the case file, it would have 20 business days to analyze and decide on the matter. The judge’s identity was not disclosed. 
 
 In a radio interview, Eduardo Guerrero, head of Mexico’s federal prisons service, denied Guzman’s transfer was a preamble to extradition, noting that prisoners awaiting extradition go to the Hermosillo jail in northwest Mexico. 
 
 It was not clear why he was taken to Ciudad Juarez, the lowest rated federal prison in a 2015 National Human Rights Commission report on factors including illicit activities and violent incidents. 
 
 Guzman’s cartel is present in the city, fighting a war for control that made it the world’s most murderous town in 2010. Crime has since dropped. 
 
 At 9.00 pm on Friday authorities entered Guzman’s cell at the Altiplano jail in Central Mexico, told him to put on a shirt and pack up his things, placing them in transparent bags, Guerrero said. 
 
 At 1.30 am on Saturday, Guzman was flown by helicopter to Mexico City airport, where he boarded a police plane and flew to Ciudad Juarez. 
 
 Guzman asked once where he was being taken, but was not told until he arrived in the Ciudad Juarez lockup, Guerrero added.
– Notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was transferred Saturday from the Altiplano maximum-security prison outside Mexico City to a prison just south of the Texas border, AFP reports. El Chapo arrived in Ciudad Juarez along with 150 federal police officers aboard three planes and was taken from the airport to the prison by helicopter. CNN quotes Mexican authorities who say the move "was carried out with full respect for the human rights of the inmate." Government sources say El Chapo's new prison is "one of the safest" despite not being maximum security. The former head of the Sinaloa drug cartel has broken out of maximum-security prisons twice in the past. It's unclear exactly why El Chapo was moved to a new prison. "I can't say what the government is thinking," one of his lawyers, who says the defense team wasn't notified, tells the AP. CNN quotes a Mexican official as saying the transfer to a prison closer to the border "makes it easier to extradite him" to the US. But the Mexican government has said that process is still a year or so away from being complete. Other authorities say Altiplano needed security renovations. But AFP quotes an official who says the transfer was routine and done "solely by security protocols as part of a rotation of prisoners." Authorities say they've rotated more than 7,400 prisoners since last September.