A federal judge in Brooklyn has rejected requests from notorious Mexican drug cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán for more contact with his wife and children – asking the kingpin to tell the Bureau of Prisons.
Guzmán, 67, sentenced to life and currently housed in the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, wrote a letter to Judge Brian Cogan pleading with him to increase calls and visits with his wife Emma Coronel Aispuro and their twin daughters.
“Since May 2023, the establishment no longer calls me with my daughters. And I haven’t had a call with them in seven months,” the Sinaloa cartel drug lord told the judge.
“I ask you to allow (my wife) to visit me and bring my daughters to visit me,” Guzmán wrote in the letter dated March 20 and made public last week.
“I ask for your intervention, because this is unprecedented discrimination against me.”
Cogan responded in an order last Wednesday saying there was nothing he could do since the BOP is now responsible for Guzmán’s fate and asked him to speak with the agency about it.
“After his conviction, the Bureau of Prisons became solely responsible for his conditions of confinement, and this Court has no authority to alter the conditions imposed by the Bureau of Prisons,” Cogan wrote, in a letter first reported times by Law & Crime. Tuesday.
Guzmán claimed he received two 15-minute calls a month, but said “the staff here told me the FBI agent monitoring the calls wasn’t responding.”
The judge responded by clarifying that the summons schedule had been set up for Guzmán’s trial, but once the baron was convicted, the BOP resumed its conditions.
Guzmán’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told The Post via email that his client is subject to the “harshest conditions” he has ever seen for an inmate “in any U.S. prison.”
The lawyer said Guzmán is kept in solitary confinement and has no contact with his wife and “rarely has the opportunity to see or speak to his children.”
Lichtman said Cogan was right to point out that this was a problem for the BOP, not the judge.
“Mr. Guzman will address this matter with the BOP who will undoubtedly refuse to relax the harsh and unnecessary conditions imposed on him, years after he was first placed in solitary confinement,” the attorney said.
Guzmán made a similar request to Cogan in August when Aispuro, 34, was scheduled to be released from prison after serving three years for drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracy.
At the time, he requested that the former beauty queen be allowed to visit their preteen twin daughters, Email Guadalupe and Maria Joaquina.
The narco kingpin was convicted in February 2019 on a series of drug trafficking charges for running a multibillion-dollar operation.
In January 2023, Chapo sought help from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to return him home, saying he was subjected to “cruel and unjust” conditions in U.S. prisons.
The BOP did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
New York Post
