Following the sensational second escape from a Mexican prison of Juaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a former top ranking Drug Enforcement Administration official says that “the ethnicity of Chicago lends itself to a lot of the drug trade.”
In remarks that are likely to prompt an angry response, the DEA’s former Chief of International Operations Michael Vigil also told CNN on Tuesday, “Chicago is one of the cities in the United States that has a huge Mexican or Hispanic population which makes it very easy for cartel operatives to blend in to the population there in Chicago.”
Vigil — interviewed about Chicago’s importance to Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel — also said that Chicago’s location and transportation infrastructure were key reasons why it had supplanted Miami as “the principal distribution hub for drugs in the United States.”
He also blamed the city’s gang culture, and added, “ You have a number of ethnic gangs that the Sinaloa cartel uses to distribute drugs throughout the city.”
The Chicago Crime Commission on Tuesday reinstated Guzman as the city’s Public Enemy No. 1, citing his control of the majority of the city’s drug trade.
