Federal judge denies request from a lonely "El Chapo" for phone calls, visits with daughters and wife

Mexican kingpin Joaquin Archivaldo "El Chapo" Guzman Loera had his request for phone calls and visits with his young daughters denied by a federal judge, who wrote in the motion that the Bureau of Prisons is now "solely responsible" for the lonely drug lord's conditions.

"This Court has no power to alter the conditions that the Bureau of Prisons has imposed," the judge wrote in the motion filed on April 10 in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York. Calls and visits in effect while Guzman was on trial were superseded once he was convicted, the judge wrote.  The court had previously authorized two telephone calls per month.

Guzman, once the world's most notorious cartel leader who was called by prosecutors a "ruthless and bloodthirsty leader," wrote in a March 20 letter asking the judge for visits with his wife and his two daughters. He said he hasn't had calls with his daughters for seven months and lawyers "have decided to punish me by not letting me talk to my daughters. To this day they have not told me if they will no longer give me calls with my girls," he wrote. 

He asked the judge to let his wife Emma Coronel Aispuro visit. Coronel, a former beauty queen and dual U.S.-Mexico citizen, was sentenced to 36 months in prison and four years of supervised release following her 2021 arrest for helping run his multi-million dollar drug cartel. 

He would like her to "bring my daughters to visit me, since my daughters can only visit me when they are on school break, since they are studying in Mexico." He asked for intervention from the judge in the letter for the "unprecedented discrimination against me."

Guzman is serving a life sentence in a Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, which houses numerous high-profile inmates. He was convicted in 2019 of charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses. Since starting his sentence in the isolated prison, known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," "El Chapo" has petitioned for numerous ways to make his life on the inside more bearable.

The Sinaloa cartel founder sent an "SOS" through his lawyers last year to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for help due to alleged "psychological torment" he says he is suffering in a U.S. prison. He previously asked the judge to let his wife and his then 9-year-old twin daughters visit him in prison. 

Prosecutors have said thousands of people died or were ordered killed because of the Sinaloa Cartel.

In:
• Mexico
• El Chapo
• Cartel

Cara Tabachnick

Cara Tabachnick is a news editor and journalist at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at [email protected]