“El Chapo” Guzmán denounces that he cannot receive calls or visits in a US prison

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The former most powerful drug trafficker in Mexico, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, says he cannot receive phone calls or visitors in the maximum security US prison where he is serving a life sentence.

Guzmán, who in the past was able to escape from Mexican prisons apparently at will, wrote a now-disclosed letter to Judge Brian Cogan of the Eastern District Court of New York in late March, complaining that there was no able to talk to his twin daughters.

He was convicted of running an industrial-scale drug smuggling operation and is serving time in a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

In May 2023, “the center stopped granting me calls with my daughters. And I have not had calls with them for seven months,” Guzmán wrote. “I have asked when they are going to give me a call with my daughters and the staff here told me that the FBI agent who monitors the calls does not answer. “That’s all they’ve told me.”

“It is unprecedented discrimination against me,” Guzmán complained in his letter. “They have decided to punish me by not letting me talk to my daughters.”

Guzmán led the Sinaloa cartel in bloody turf battles that claimed the lives of thousands of Mexicans. He twice escaped from Mexican prisons, once through a kilometer-long tunnel dug from his cell.

After being extradited to New York, his three-month trial included stories of grisly murders, political bribery, cocaine hidden in cans of jalapenos, and jewel-encrusted guns.

Guzmán also asked the judge to authorize a visit from his wife, Emma Coronel, but did not say when he was last allowed to see her. Coronel also pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in 2021, but was later released.

“I ask that you please authorize her to visit me and bring my daughters to visit me, since my daughters can only visit me when they are on school vacations, since they are studying in Mexico,” Guzmán wrote.

Cogan responded last week by saying that once Guzmán was convicted, all dispositions are in the hands of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons and that he had no power to intervene.

In his response, Cogan also stated that, after his conviction, “the Federal Bureau of Prisons became solely responsible” for Guzmán’s confinement conditions and that the judge cannot change them.

“Accordingly, your request must be denied,” the judge said.

The letters were filed by the court in the case file, which is accessible to the public.

In December, Guzmán’s 95-year-old mother died in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa.

Lawyers for Guzmán’s family did not respond to messages seeking comment.

In 2023, Mexico extradited one of his many sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, to the United States to stand trial on drug trafficking, money laundering and other charges.

In his youth, Guzmán is believed to have led the Sinaloa cartel’s offensive to produce and export fentanyl to the United States, a substance to which some 70,000 overdose deaths are attributed annually.