No phone time for lonely El Chapo: Judge rejects drug kingpin’s request to speak with his daughters or visit with beauty queen wife

Former drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán has had his plea to resume his phone and visitation rights denied as he languishes at ADX Florence supermaximum security prison in Colorado.

The 67-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, who once boasted of being behind the killing of 3,000 people, lamented that he has felt lonely ever since his rights as a prisoner were stripped in a letter he wrote in March. 20.

Judge Brian M. Cogan wrote April 10 that it was not in his jurisdiction to determine Guzman’s ability to visit and call family.

“This court has no authority to modify the conditions imposed by the Bureau of Prisons,” Cogan wrote in the motion filed April 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

His visitation rights and phone privileges — previously two calls a month — were revoked when he was sentenced, Cogan added.

The 67-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, who once boasted of being behind the killing of 2,000 to 3,000 people, lamented that he has felt lonely without his children or wife Emma Coronel (pictured) ever since his rights as a prisoner were stripped away in a letter he wrote on March 20

Guzman was also denied visitation rights with his wife, according to CBS News.

In the letter, which was filed in court last Tuesday, Guzmán pleaded with Judge Brian Cogan to allow his wife Emma Coronel to visit him and asked that he be allowed to speak with the couple’s twin daughters over the phone.

“Sorry to bother you again with the request that I have asked you before regarding my wife, Emma Coronel,” Guzmán wrote in the letter.

‘I am asking you to please give her permission to visit me and bring my daughters to visit as my daughters can only visit me when they are on school holidays as they are studying in Mexico.’

The former cartel boss showed his softer side despite proudly running a drug empire where thousands were slaughtered – and millions more felled by his illicit wares.

Guzmán also requested that Cogan restore his right to speak with the 12-year-old girls twice a month for 15 minutes.

He claimed he had not spoken to them since May 2023, when the prison stopped authorizing the phone calls.

“I have asked when they will call me with my daughters and the staff here told me that the FBI agent monitoring the calls is not answering,” he wrote.

Guzman’s visitation rights and phone privilege — previously two calls a month — were revoked when he was sentenced, Cogan added

Guzman was also denied visitation rights with his wife, Emma Coronel, who was released from US custody in September 2023 after she completed 31 months of a 36-month sentence

El Chapo spends 23 hours locked in a 7 x 12 foot concrete cell at ADX Florence, a super maximum security prison in Colorado

‘That’s all they’ve told me. Please continue to give me the two calls you authorized me per month. I don’t understand why the prosecutor responsible for SAM’s rules stopped allowing calls with my daughters.’

The former kingpin spends 23 hours locked in a 7 x 12 foot concrete cell with double doors in a section called ‘Range 13’.

He is under 24-hour supervision and is prohibited from mixing with the inmate population.

Guzmán has often complained about prison conditions ever since he was found guilty by a federal jury in February 2019 on 10 counts that included drug trafficking, money laundering and using a firearm to commit crimes.

In March 2022, his lawyer, Mariel Colón, told the Mexican network Milenio that prison staff violated his rights.

“They don’t take him out into the open, they don’t take him out for a single day,” Colón alleged at the time. ‘We’ve had a lot of problems because they don’t treat him medically if he gets sick. The requests are ignored.’

She claimed that prison staff had also denied El Chapo access to water and dental treatment for his molars.

Coronel told Noticias Univisión in 2019 that he had vision problems and that he had complained about a bad haircut because the barbers could not communicate with him in Spanish.

Guzmán has often complained about prison conditions ever since he was found guilty by a federal jury in February 2019 on 10 counts that included drug trafficking, money laundering and using a firearm to commit crimes

El Chapo is only allowed to spend one hour outside the concrete prison cell where he spends the rest of his life

“He looks a lot thinner, a little more strangled. He is not feeling well there, Colón said at the time. “It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen him.”

Once considered the most powerful drug trafficker in the world – after Colombian Pablo Escobar – Guzmán was extradited from Mexico in January 2017 after he was recaptured in January 2016 following his second prison break in June 2015 via a tunnel built by his organization below. The prison.

Before that, he had been on the run for 13 years, after sneaking out of prison in January 2001 on a washing van.

His wife was released from US federal custody in September 2023 after she completed 31 months of a 36-month sentence handed down by a federal court in Washington, DC in November 2021 after she pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and laundering of money.

His son, Ovidio Guzmán, was extradited from Mexico to Chicago in September to face drug-trafficking charges.

Guzmán’s other three sons, Iván Guzmán, Jesús Guzmán and Joaquín Guzmán, are wanted by the US government on similar charges.