No phone time for lonely El Chapo: Judge denies drug kingpin's request to speak to his daughters or have visits with beauty queen wife

Former drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán has had his plea to reinstate his phone call and visitation rights rejected, while he languishes at the ADX Florence super maximum security prison in Colorado.

The 67-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, who once boasted about being behind the killing of 3,000 people, moaned that he has been feeling lonely ever since his rights as a prisoner were stripped away in a letter he penned on 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 power to alter the conditions that the Bureau of Prisons has imposed,' Cogan wrote in the motion filed on April 10 in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York. 

His visitation rights and phone privileges - previously two calls a month - were canceled out when he was convicted, Cogan added.

Former drug lord Joaquín ' El Chapo ' Guzmán has been rejected in his request in federal court in New York to reinstate his phone call and visitation rights while he languishes at the ADX Florence super maximum security prison in Colorado

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

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

In the missive, which was filed in court this past Tuesday, Guzmán pleaded with judge Brian Cogan to allow his wife Emma Coronel, to visit him and asked that he be permitted to talk to couple's twin daughters over the phone.

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

'I ask that you please authorize her to visit me and 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.'

The former cartel boss showed his softer side despite proudly running a drug empire that saw thousands slaughtered - and millions more affected by his illegal wares. 

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

He claimed that he had not spoken with them since May 2023, when the jail stopped authorizing the phone calls.

'I have asked when they are going to give me a call with my daughters and the staff here told me that the FBI agent who monitors the calls does not answer,' he wrote. 

Guzman's visitation rights and phone privilege - previously two calls a month - were canceled out when he was convicted, Cogan added 

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

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

'That's all they've told me. I ask you to please continue giving me the two calls that you authorized me per month. I don't understand why the prosecutor who is in charge of the SAMs Rules stopped authorizing calls with my daughters.' 

The former kingpin spends 23 hours locked in a 7-by-12-foot concrete cell with double doors in a section dubbed 'Range 13.'

He is supervised round-the-clock and he is prohibited from mingling with the inmate population.

Guzmán has often complained of the jail conditions ever since he was found guilty in by a federal jury in February 2019 on 10 counts that included drug trafficking money laundering and the use of a fire arm to carry out crimes.

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

'They don't take him out into the open air, 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 the prison staff had also denied El Chapo access to water and dental treatment for his molars.

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

Guzmán has often complained of the jail conditions ever since he was found guilty in by a federal jury in February 2019 on 10 counts that included drug trafficking money laundering and the use of a fire arm to carry out crimes 

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

'He looks much skinnier, a little more stifled. He is not doing well there,' Colón said at the time. 'It is the saddest I have ever seen him.' 

Guzmán was once consider the most powerful drug trafficker in the world - after Colombian Pablo Escobar - and was extradited from Mexico in January 2017 after he was recaptured in January 2016 following his second prison escape in June 2015 via a tunnel that his organization had constructed underneath the jail. 

Prior to that, he had been on the run for 13 years after he snuck out of prison on a laundry cart in January 2001.

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

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 U.S. government on similar charges.