El Chapo managed to communicate with his sons from US maximum-security prison

Not even the most secure U.S. prison could fully contain Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. His desire to send messages related to criminal activities to his sons, leaders of a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, ultimately overcame the strict restrictions imposed in his confinement in a Colorado maximum-security facility.

El Chapo evaded the security measures at ADX Florence, where he has been serving a life sentence since 2019. He did so through the only loophole outside of direct surveillance: visits from his lawyers. In hushed tones, shielded from the prying eyes of federal agents who monitor his every move, the drug lord asked his intermediary to deliver secret messages to his sons and, in return, has received communications from them, reveals a report from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) obtained by EL PAÍS.

Threats directed at government informants, payments related to drug sales, and methods for laundering money were some of the messages exchanged by the Guzmán family through an unidentified emissary.

“Investigations revealed that you and several of your relatives conspired to evade the communications monitoring requirements of the SAMs (Special Administrative Measures and Extreme Isolation) regulations in order to facilitate criminal acts on your behalf and on behalf of the cartel,” warns the document dated February 2025.

The coded messages from El Chapo were addressed to his children Iván Archivaldo, Jesús Alfredo, Ovidio, Joaquín, and Rosa Alitzel Guzmán; his sisters Bernarda and Armida Guzmán Loera; as well as his ex-wives, Alejandrina Salazar and Griselda López.

All of them, the BOP emphasizes, addressing the kingpin directly, “sent or received illicit communications from him with threats against government informants and also directed various criminal acts, including facilitating the trafficking of undocumented workers to the United States, making payments to cartel members, and using real estate transactions to launder money.”

“In addition to the illicit communications scheme, his four children mentioned above (except Rosa Alitzel Guzmán) have been charged with federal offenses in the United States for their involvement in drug trafficking, violence, and other crimes,” the agency added.

War against La Mayiza

The precise content of El Chapo’s messages, their scope, or the period in which they were sent were not disclosed in the BOP report. To date, no employee of Jeffrey Lichtman’s law firm, which is leading the drug lord’s legal defense from New York, has been implicated in any related crimes. As of the publication of this article, Lichtman had not responded to a request for comment on this matter. Attorney Mariel Colón Miró, who visited El Chapo at ADX Florence, told this publication, through an assistant, that she was unaware of the messenger mentioned by the BOP. “There is no intermediary visiting them (El Chapo’s sons) and Mr. Guzmán,” the attorney’s assistant explained in a text message.

Two of Guzmán’s sons, Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo, are the new leaders of a powerful cartel cell known as Los Chapitos. Since September 2024, they have been waging a bloody war against groups aligned with La Mayiza, the cartel faction led by Ismael Zambada Sicairos, alias “Mayito Flaco,” son of imprisoned Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Los Chapitos were the rulers of Culiacán and had the current governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, and other Mexican government officials in their pocket, according to a recent indictment unsealed by the Southern District of New York, which has caused a scandal in Mexico.

The cartel’s internal conflict escalated to gunfire after Joaquín Guzmán López, one of El Chapo’s sons, kidnapped his godfather, El Mayo, in July of that year. He tricked him into attending a meeting in Sinaloa, forced him onto a private plane, and handed him over to the DEA in Texas. Joaquín Guzmán also surrendered that day. This is the version of events provided by El Mayo, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges and is now awaiting sentencing in a Brooklyn prison.

In February 2024, five months before Zambada’s surprise arrest, U.S. prison authorities discovered that El Chapo was secretly exchanging messages with his children. The BOP’s immediate reaction was to prohibit communication between him and his sister Bernarda, the only relative in Mexico with whom he was allowed to speak by phone. Furthermore, it required that a lawyer be present at every visit from his twin daughters, born in California (to his third wife, Emma Coronel), and from paralegals.

Authorities have not allowed Coronel, ​​a former beauty queen, to see her husband since his extradition from Mexico in January 2017. She was accused of acting as a messenger between him and her stepchildren in planning Guzmán’s 2015 escape from a Mexican prison through a tunnel, one of his trademarks in drug trafficking. It was his second escape: in 2001, he fled in a laundry cart from the Puente Grande prison in Jalisco. Coronel, ​​who was born in California, served a three-year sentence for her involvement in cartel activities and was released in 2023.

El Chapo’s complaints

The Bureau of Prisons report responds to one of many letters written by El Chapo and his lawyers requesting a relaxation of his prison regime. The drug lord wrote a letter a few days ago, in his own handwriting, to Judge Brian Cogan requesting extradition to Mexico. The former world’s most-wanted man has insisted on receiving “equal treatment under the law” and requested to be tried in Mexico. Cogan quickly dismissed the request on Monday.

A few weeks ago, Guzmán also complained about the “cruel and inhumane treatment” he has received. El Chapo has spent the last eight years complaining that he is kept in his cell almost all day, that his ailments are not being treated, that constant searches are disrupting his sleep, that he is not being given English lessons, and that his legal representatives have even been prevented from seeing him.

“The rules are used as torture,” “to this day I have not seen the sun,” read some of the letters he has sent to a federal court in Colorado.

The strict rules for convicted terrorists, known as SAMs, almost completely restrict prisoners’ communication with the outside world. They are allowed a few visits from family members, a limited number of phone calls, and the right to write letters, but always under the watchful eye of the authorities.

In El Chapo’s case, his every word is meticulously analyzed by agents from the FBI, the DEA, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Some of his letters have taken more than a year to reach their destination, while others remain in the archives of these agencies. One of the few concessions is allowing him access to the ADX Florence prison yard for an hour, but he is placed inside a cage. No one else accompanies him; he is prohibited from speaking with other inmates.

One of the concerns of the Department of Justice is that, through his messenger, El Chapo obstructed the criminal proceedings against his sons, and that of Néstor Isidro Pérez Salazar, alias “El Nini,” head of security for Los Chapitos, as well as of his compadre El Mayo Zambada.

“Given your leadership status, your demonstrated violence toward any threat to you and your organization, and your history of escaping from maximum security prisons, the Southern District of New York believes that, without SAMs rules, unrestricted communications with other people pose a significant risk of death or harm to the community,” the BOP report concludes.

El Chapo was unable to secure even the slightest relaxation of the strict security protocols at the first U.S. prison where he was held: the Manhattan detention center. Authorities feared the cartel might attempt a helicopter rescue operation. Underlying these measures was the memory of a failed attempt in 1981, when a helicopter approached the prison’s rooftop yard but failed to take any of the inmates.

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