No one has ever escaped from the Colorado Supermax prison since it opened in 1994.
The incarcerated drug magnate known as El Chapo had an escape plan – but not the daring kind he previously used to break out of jail in Mexico – on a contraband motorcycle through a secret tunnel. El Chapo’s new plan to escape America’s most secure prison was simply to ask for officials to hold open the door for him.
Joaquin El Chapo Guzman became a billionaire running the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico that federal law enforcement agents say is still responsible for the lion’s share of all illicit street drug sales in Chicago.
A decade ago El Chapo was caught in a firefight in Mexico, extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison at the nation’s Supermax top security prison in Colorado where no one has ever escaped in more than 30 years of operation.
Now, in a series of new pen and paper letters from El Chapo himself, the world’s premier drug trafficker claims his jailhouse treatment is inhumane, his conviction wrongful and he’s asking to be deported, and allowed to serve his life sentence in Mexico.
Chapo’s trial judge, Brian Cogan, is a Chicago native and graduate of University of Illinois.
In this ruling on Tuesday, New York Judge Cogan says Chapo’s “documents make no sense and none of them have legal merit.”Request DENIED.
“He’s in a United States prison and he’s not happy about it,” said retired Drug Enforcement Administration official Mike Gannon, former assistant agent in charge of the Chicago division of DEA. “Obviously, he tried to write a letter to the judge and it was shut down like it should be.”
Gannon discussed a report out on Tuesday by a Mexican news agency claiming El Chapo has managed to communicate with his sons from the U.S. Supermax prison, quoting a confidential report last year from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Two of Chapo’s sons are charged in Chicago and in federal custody here.
“That doesn’t surprise me one bit,” said Gannon “Just like the way these drug traffickers and people like El Chapo operate, they look for any vulnerability they can, and they’re criminals. And they’re going to do anything they can with any vulnerability that’s exposed to them. So it’s no surprise to me he’s trying to get messages back to, you know, what’s alleged with family members and other people are even trying to make threats,” he said.
A confidential Bureau of Prisons report last year found that El Chapo had used an intermediary to deliver coded messages to his adult children regarding their ongoing criminal enterprise. That was said to have happened despite El Chapo being held under an ongoing and exceedingly strict special lockdown. Prison agency officials have not responded to NBC Chicago questions about the reported breachor whether anyone has been disciplined.
