US judge denies ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s request for calls and family visits

A federal judge in New York denied Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera, who is serving a life sentence in the United States, his requests to receive calls and for family members to visit him in the maximum security prison in Colorado.

The judge told Guzmán Loera that the Bureau of Prisons is now “solely responsible” for the conditions of his solitary confinement at the Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) prison in Florence, one of the safest in the world, according to the CBS network.

The judge responded to a motion presented by ‘El Chapo’ on March 20 to restore the two 15-minute calls he had a month with his 12-year-old twin daughters, canceled in May 2023, and to allow visit of the minors and their mother, his wife Emma Coronel.

In response, the New York magistrate told him that the court where he was tried “does not have the power to alter the conditions” imposed by the Bureau of Prisons and recalled that the calls and visits that had been granted to him during the trial were replaced after finish this, in 2019.

According to Guzmán Loera, his calls were canceled due to the “unprecedented discrimination against me.”

The former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel told the judge in his motion that the calls are the only contact he has with his daughters, who live in Mexico and cannot visit him because they do not have a visa.

His wife lives in California and was released from prison last year after serving two and a half years for drug trafficking and money laundering.