If there’s one person the U.S. authorities don’t want escaping from prison it’s the
notorious Mexican drug kingpin, one Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
This man from meager beginnings, the son of a farming family from Sinaloa, became an enemy
number one of the United States and a very rich man, too.
They have him locked up now, but El Chapo has escaped from prison before, not once,
but twice, so it goes without saying that right now he is guarded like no one else on
the planet.
Could this criminal Houdini get out again?
Let’s have a look.
First let’s see how he managed to escape from prison the first time.
In 1993, the LA Times ran the headline, “Mexico Arrests Reputed Top Drug Kingpin.”
He was arrested in Guatemala, not far from the Mexican border.
The charges against him were murder, kidnapping and of course drug-trafficking.
The authorities said he was behind a huge trafficking operation and a massive tunnel
that ran from Tijuana-to-San Diego where drugs were carried through.
Digging tunnels, as you will see, was something of a forte for Guzman and his crew.
He was extradited to Mexico and got 20 years, nine months, to be served in a maximum security
prison.
There it’s said he controlled the place and lived in comfort, with the guards doing
what he told them to do.
While he could easily run his operations from there, as time went by he feared extradition
to the U.S.
It was time to go.
It was January 19, 2001, when he made this first escape.
A prison guard named Francisco "El Chito" Camberos Rivera opened the electronic door
to his cell when Guzman hid himself in a laundry basket.
He was pushed through a series of doors and eventually got out of the main door.
From there he was taken in the trunk of a car to a designated spot, and when the time
was right he took off into the night.
Like that, he was gone.
It might sound too easy, but it was found out he not only had guards on his payroll
but also the prison director.
Even the cops were paid to make his getaway into the night that much easier.
This turned out to be a bit of an embarrassment for the Mexican authorities.
All the bribes Guzman paid added up to about $2.5 million.
So, this could never happen again, right?
Wrong.
He kept on doing what he did and became Mexico’s most wanted man, but despite that he managed
to evade capture.
Then on 22 February, 2014, after an operation between Mexican and U.S. authorities, he was
captured again.
They had him, and they thought that was it.
He was not going to bribe his way out of prison this time.
When being moved around he was surrounded by the military and police.
Even the A-Team couldn’t have made a plan come together to extricate this guy from the
arms of the law.
This time he was locked up in a very restricted area.
His cell had no widows and he had little contact with anyone.
He had a spartan cell and this time no luxuries.
A bed, a shelf, a shower, a toilet bowl and a basin, that’s what he got.
He was allowed some visits and he had the right to receive the maximum amount of money
to buy hygiene products.
That was about US$48, not so much for a man who had millions.
He could take an hour out of his cell a day, but the guards were told not to communicate
with him.
How on Earth could he escape a second time then?
Well, on 11 July, 2015, he did just that.
You see, there was a blind spot for the security cameras and that was where the shower was.
At close to 9 pm that night he was seen going to that part of the cell, and that’s where
he vanished.
Prior to that, for months El Chapo’s men had been digging a tunnel and the end point
was at that shower cell.
The digging had been so noisy at times some of the other inmates had complained about
the strange noises.
El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel, played a big part in orchestrating the escape.
El Chapo had land not far from the prison where the digging began, and he had even managed
to get a smartwatch smuggled into his cell so the diggers knew the coordinates.
This was some escape and the tunnel even had ventilation and lighting.
To get out fast El Chapo used a motorbike, but it was specially made to run on rails.
This contraption was also used for the excavation process.
Authorities later said the tunnel was 0.93 miles (1.5 km) long, 5 feet 7 inches (1.7
meters) high and 30 inches (75 cm) in width.
It was 33 feet (10 meters) underground, so El Chapo used a ladder to get down there.
He was a free man again, but his freedom didn’t last very long.
After an armed raid at a residence on 8 January, 2016, Guzman managed to get away, once again
using tunnels.
He was captured shortly after, though.
Now the USA wanted him, again, and proceedings got the on the way to extradite him.
Guzman’s men tried anything to prevent this from happening, and even assassinated a federal
judge.
It didn’t work.
He was finally extradited on January 19, 2017, to the USA, exactly 18 years after this first
prison escape.
Right after his sentencing, in which he received life in prison plus 30 years, he just disappeared.
That’s because on his way to prison the safest bet was to take him to an undisclosed
location.
Even Guzman’s lawyers didn’t know where he was.
It was later revealed that he ended up at what’s called America’s highest security
prison.
That is the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, in Florence, Colorado.
It’s known in short as ADX Florence.
This is where the worst of the worst go, in prison terms it’s the end of the road.
There are way more guards here to the number of inmates than at other prisons.
Inmates are locked up 23 hours a day.
When they are allowed out, it may come at any time, day or night, so even if somehow
a plan could be devised the people on the outside wouldn’t know when their guy was
out of his cell.
The 7 by 12 feet (2.1 by 3.6 meters) cell has a bed, a stool and a desk all made of
poured concrete.
The cells are soundproofed so prisoners can’t shout and communicate with others.
The inmates never know where they are in the facility because they never see through a
window that will allow them to guess their location.
Even when they can exercise it is not a yard, but like an empty swimming pool so they can’t
see over the walls.
It’s not a big one, either, and it only takes ten steps to walk from end to end.
All over the prison there are motion detectors and cameras and the thick steel doors can
only be opened with the remote control.
Officers monitor all parts of the prison from a control room and if anything strange should
happen they can hit a panic button which will automatically lock every door in the prison.
The prison also has pressure pads, so an alert is sent if someone should stand on one of
those pads.
If someone could somehow get past the pressure pads and cameras and get outside they would
have to scale a 12-foot-tall (3.7 meter) razor wire fence, and they’d have to do that in
front of heavily armed guards in one of the many towers.
Other guards walk around with attack dogs.
It’s very likely that Guzman is also in the most secure unit of this ultra-secure
prison, which is called, “Range-13.”
By the way, guards at this prison are vetted to prevent anyone corrupt getting a job.
While working they are told to communicate with prisoners as little as possible.
It’s escape proof is what most people say, and it’s not a nice place to end up.
A former warden once described it like this: “The Supermax is life after death.
It's long term.
In my opinion, it's far much worse than death.”
Others have said how eerily quiet the place is because no two inmates move at the same
time.
It’s very clean, everything is spotless, so when journalists have gone in there they
have been very surprised.
It might look as bright as heaven if it weren’t hell.
In fact, that’s how one warden described it, like a clean version of hell.
He told 60 Minutes, “I don't know what hell is, but I do know the assumption would be,
for a free person, it's pretty close to it."
This is how one inmate described it, “The purpose is to gradually tear a person down
mentally and physically, through environmental and physical deprivation.”
For an inmate, it’s kind of like having the place to yourself.
Some people have said because it’s like this the only way a person could escape would
be if they actually had the prison warden in their pocket, which is never going to happen.
There are only around 400 inmates, some of whom include Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber
and Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bomber.
Just to get near the place you’d be spotted and Guzman can forget about buying land near
it.
This prison is in a remote location; there’s not much for miles around.
Guzman has had visitors, but only his lawyer and his two daughters have been allowed to
see him.
He cannot actually touch anyone who visits him.
He told his lawyer because of the oppressive conditions he regularly throws up, has headaches,
and also sinus trouble.
He said it’s very hard to sleep because the lights are on all the time.
If prisoners do want a break from the monotony they at least have a TV, but that only plays
religious and educational programs.
This is how another person who is retired from the prison described this place: "Supermax
is austere, and it is run with absolute structure and security in mind.
From an operational perspective, it's the most secure prison on earth.”
But if the man known as Papillon escaped from the notorious Devil's Island penal colony,
and if those three guys really did escape from Alcatraz, maybe no prison on Earth is
one hundred percent secure.
Just about anyone in the corrections business would disagree, but maybe El Chapo could get
out of this one.
What are the chances of Mr. Guzman escaping from the place nicknamed the “Alcatraz of
the Rockies”?
Let’s think about it.
If he were to get out of his cell maybe he’d have to do that by bribing a guard, but they
have been vetted.
Perhaps the only way a guard would offer him help would be because Guzman’s men had kidnapped
his family.
But as only one man moves at a time, that prisoner is being watched from the control
room.
We just don’t think he could go out of the front door.
He certainly couldn’t get past those pressure pads, the guards in the towers, the guards
with the dogs, and over a massive fence that would cut him to pieces.
All the time, everything is caught on CCTV.
He would need a small army on the outside and since the location is in the middle of
nowhere, that army would be seen.
Even if he employed some great hacker to hack the prison system and open the doors, he’d
still have to face heavily armed guards.
We can’t see this happening outside of a Hollywood movie.
But, prisoners do have rights to see medical professionals never mind how secure they are.
This is U.S. law, so perhaps an escape could be made if El Chapo had to make a trip to
a hospital.
Possibly a catastrophic event such as an earthquake or a fire could result in an escape, but this
is pretty unlikely.
If prisoners were suddenly removed from their cells they’d be shackled, so they wouldn’t
get anywhere fast.
In conclusion, we think that El Chapo won’t be going anywhere.
This prison is a techno-fortress that no man could escape from.
The only scenario that he gets out is in a screenplay which involves an apocalyptic event
shutting down all the systems and the guards being eaten by monsters, after which El Capo
sneaks out the back door and begins a mission of survival.
He’ll be doing no digging out of prison this time and no one will be holding out their
hand and accepting a bribe.
Now we are going to serve you up something special.
Try checking out this video over here or this video right here.
We can promise they’re both more entertaining than a stint in a supermax prison!