As the top boss of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán ran a multinational drug-smuggling enterprise despite being functionally illiterate, having dropped out of school around the third grade.
Evidence presented at El Chapo’s trial, which ended in 2019 with his conviction and a sentence of life in U.S. prison with no parole, showed that he tended to scribble messages to underlings in broken Spanish.
So when a series of letters, handwritten in English and allegedly signed by El Chapo, recently began arriving at the federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., they posed a mystery. Did El Chapo really write them? And if not, who was writing on his behalf?
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York received a letter, left, on June 23, 2026, purportedly signed by imprisoned Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. He sent the federal court in Brooklyn a handwritten message in Spanish, right, on July 15, 2025.
(Eastern District Court of New York )
More than 20 letters attributed to El Chapo have been received by the court, with the first dated April 10 and the latest posted Tuesday on his case docket in the Eastern District of New York.
They have voiced a litany of complaints about the unfairness of El Chapo’s prosecution and requested that he be sent back to Mexico.
“I did no harm to no one,” said one, dated April 25. “I was known in my country not for bad things, the good things I’ve done.”
The letters have drawn mockery and outrage online, with Mexican citizens fuming over the notorious drug lord, who twice escaped from prison in his home country, apparently having the gall to think he could be set free.
Others wondered whether El Chapo somehow managed to learn English behind bars, or whether he was perhaps using the public court filings to send coded messages that enabled him to continue calling the shots for his cartel.
The messages carry the return address of ADX Florence, the maximum-security federal prison in Colorado where the onetime kingpin is housed in strict isolation. His attorneys, however, note that the envelopes were postmarked in Jackson, Miss., not Colorado.
“They’re not him,” Mariel Colón Miró, a member of El Chapo’s defense team, told The Times. “We have an investigation into who is sending them.”
Colón Miró emphasized that she and other attorneys who represent El Chapo played no part in sending the messages.
“It’s somebody crazy,” she said.
A U.S. law enforcement source familiar with El Chapo’s case but not authorized to speak publicly called the letters “complete bull—.”
“Not from him,” the source said. “Probably someone mentally ill.”
Though often rambling and incoherent, the letters have taken up the court’s time. Judge Brian Cogan, who presided over El Chapo’s trial, responded to the first five letters received by the court with a May 4 order denying their requests.
“Some of these documents make no sense and none of them have any legal merit,” the judge wrote.
Still, the letters keep coming. One this month seemed to offer a clue and, like the others, included words underlined seemingly at random.
Postmarked June 10, it said that “the letters that are being received to the courts is my legal petition of Aubrey Gideon in Greenwood, MS 38930 is his rights and the connection with my lawyer on fighting for my freedom in the U.S.A.”
Public records show an Aubrey Gideon has lived in the town of Greenwood and was convicted of cocaine possession in 2009. Messages sent to email addresses associated with Gideon went unreturned, and several phone numbers listed for him were out of service.
In December 2022, Gideon sent a letter to the Mississippi Supreme Court that said he had been “suspended” from visiting the post office in Greenwood over some type of incident. Gideon asked the state’s high court to intervene on his behalf.
The Mississippi letter references a local judge, Carlos Palmer, who told The Times that he couldn’t recall what precipitated Gideon’s missive. Palmer said Gideon is a fixture on the streets of their town.
“Mr. Gideon walks around downtown Greenwood every single day,” Palmer said. “I don’t know what his circumstances is. He’s been in court several times for several situations.”
It’s highly unlikely that El Chapo has been able to communicate with Gideon — or anyone else outside of his attorneys and his two teenage daughters, who are the only ones approved to visit and speak with him under restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures.
In July 2024, El Chapo filed a civil rights lawsuit in the District of Colorado federal court seeking to lift the measures and improve the conditions of his confinement.
“On a typical day,” one court filing said, El Chapo “has no contact with a single other human being who shares a language in which they can communicate.”
El Chapo said he has been unable to get adequate sleep and experiences “near-constant severe sinus, ear, nose, and throat pain,” which he attributed to hot air being frequently pumped into his cell.
“I am suffering from severe sleep deprivation as a result of being woken up repeatedly throughout the night, every night by this hot air,” he wrote.
He also told the court he does not receive any counseling inside the prison. “I have no one to help me cope with the effects and trauma of solitary confinement,” he wrote.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit on June 9.
A pro bono attorney appointed by the court to represent El Chapo in the case, David Lane, said they plan to file a new complaint on his behalf. Lane said the extreme isolation is unconstitutional, violating the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
“He has not seen actual sunshine or felt the sun on his skin in years,” Lane said. “He does get outside exercise in a cage, but it’s in the shade.”
According to Lane and court filings in the Eastern District of New York, for a time El Chapo was able to communicate with a prisoner in a neighboring cell by shouting through the walls.
That inmate, identified in court filings as James “Jimmy” Sabatino — a reputed Gambino crime family associate sentenced to prison in 2017 for stealing millions worth of jewelry through an elaborate con — wrote to the Brooklyn federal court as well, in November last year.
Sabatino described how he and El Chapo were housed next to each other in an ultra-secure part of ADX, an area he dubbed “The Suites.”
Sabatino wrote that, although he spoke little Spanish and El Chapo barely any English, they were able to strike up a friendship. Sabatino said he saw “the sensitive side” of the convicted drug lord emerge during difficult moments, such as the death of El Chapo’s mother in 2023.
“I have seen his mental health rapidly deteriorate, [and it] has gotten to the point that I fear for him,” Sabatino wrote. “He has trouble communicating and putting his thoughts in a coherent manner.”
In January, Sabatino sent a letter to the court asking to withdraw his request to be granted “next friend” status.
Lane said the two men were separated by prison officials and can no longer communicate with each other.
Meanwhile, El Chapo’s other letter-writing supporter has not given up on pushing the court to send him home. The latest message referenced Mexico’s president, and noted that the imprisoned cartel leader has not attempted “any type of escaping from the U.S.A.”
“Claudia Sheinbaum has a safe place for my incarceration,” it said.
As the top boss of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán ran a multinational drug-smuggling enterprise despite being functionally illiterate, having dropped out of school around the third grade.
Evidence presented at El Chapo’s trial, which ended in 2019 with his conviction and a sentence of life in U.S. prison with no parole, showed that he tended to scribble messages to underlings in broken Spanish.
So when a series of letters, handwritten in English and allegedly signed by El Chapo, recently began arriving at the federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., they posed a mystery. Did El Chapo really write them? And if not, who was writing on his behalf?
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York received a letter, left, on June 23, 2026, purportedly signed by imprisoned Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. He sent the federal court in Brooklyn a handwritten message in Spanish, right, on July 15, 2025.
(Eastern District Court of New York )
More than 20 letters attributed to El Chapo have been received by the court, with the first dated April 10 and the latest posted Tuesday on his case docket in the Eastern District of New York.
They have voiced a litany of complaints about the unfairness of El Chapo’s prosecution and requested that he be sent back to Mexico.
“I did no harm to no one,” said one, dated April 25. “I was known in my country not for bad things, the good things I’ve done.”
The letters have drawn mockery and outrage online, with Mexican citizens fuming over the notorious drug lord, who twice escaped from prison in his home country, apparently having the gall to think he could be set free.
Others wondered whether El Chapo somehow managed to learn English behind bars, or whether he was perhaps using the public court filings to send coded messages that enabled him to continue calling the shots for his cartel.
The messages carry the return address of ADX Florence, the maximum-security federal prison in Colorado where the onetime kingpin is housed in strict isolation. His attorneys, however, note that the envelopes were postmarked in Jackson, Miss., not Colorado.
“They’re not him,” Mariel Colón Miró, a member of El Chapo’s defense team, told The Times. “We have an investigation into who is sending them.”
Colón Miró emphasized that she and other attorneys who represent El Chapo played no part in sending the messages.
“It’s somebody crazy,” she said.
A U.S. law enforcement source familiar with El Chapo’s case but not authorized to speak publicly called the letters “complete bull—.”
“Not from him,” the source said. “Probably someone mentally ill.”
Though often rambling and incoherent, the letters have taken up the court’s time. Judge Brian Cogan, who presided over El Chapo’s trial, responded to the first five letters received by the court with a May 4 order denying their requests.
“Some of these documents make no sense and none of them have any legal merit,” the judge wrote.
Still, the letters keep coming. One this month seemed to offer a clue and, like the others, included words underlined seemingly at random.
Postmarked June 10, it said that “the letters that are being received to the courts is my legal petition of Aubrey Gideon in Greenwood, MS 38930 is his rights and the connection with my lawyer on fighting for my freedom in the U.S.A.”
Public records show an Aubrey Gideon has lived in the town of Greenwood and was convicted of cocaine possession in 2009. Messages sent to email addresses associated with Gideon went unreturned, and several phone numbers listed for him were out of service.
In December 2022, Gideon sent a letter to the Mississippi Supreme Court that said he had been “suspended” from visiting the post office in Greenwood over some type of incident. Gideon asked the state’s high court to intervene on his behalf.
The Mississippi letter references a local judge, Carlos Palmer, who told The Times that he couldn’t recall what precipitated Gideon’s missive. Palmer said Gideon is a fixture on the streets of their town.
“Mr. Gideon walks around downtown Greenwood every single day,” Palmer said. “I don’t know what his circumstances is. He’s been in court several times for several situations.”
It’s highly unlikely that El Chapo has been able to communicate with Gideon — or anyone else outside of his attorneys and his two teenage daughters, who are the only ones approved to visit and speak with him under restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures.
In July 2024, El Chapo filed a civil rights lawsuit in the District of Colorado federal court seeking to lift the measures and improve the conditions of his confinement.
“On a typical day,” one court filing said, El Chapo “has no contact with a single other human being who shares a language in which they can communicate.”
El Chapo said he has been unable to get adequate sleep and experiences “near-constant severe sinus, ear, nose, and throat pain,” which he attributed to hot air being frequently pumped into his cell.
“I am suffering from severe sleep deprivation as a result of being woken up repeatedly throughout the night, every night by this hot air,” he wrote.
He also told the court he does not receive any counseling inside the prison. “I have no one to help me cope with the effects and trauma of solitary confinement,” he wrote.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit on June 9.
A pro bono attorney appointed by the court to represent El Chapo in the case, David Lane, said they plan to file a new complaint on his behalf. Lane said the extreme isolation is unconstitutional, violating the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
“He has not seen actual sunshine or felt the sun on his skin in years,” Lane said. “He does get outside exercise in a cage, but it’s in the shade.”
According to Lane and court filings in the Eastern District of New York, for a time El Chapo was able to communicate with a prisoner in a neighboring cell by shouting through the walls.
That inmate, identified in court filings as James “Jimmy” Sabatino — a reputed Gambino crime family associate sentenced to prison in 2017 for stealing millions worth of jewelry through an elaborate con — wrote to the Brooklyn federal court as well, in November last year.
Sabatino described how he and El Chapo were housed next to each other in an ultra-secure part of ADX, an area he dubbed “The Suites.”
Sabatino wrote that, although he spoke little Spanish and El Chapo barely any English, they were able to strike up a friendship. Sabatino said he saw “the sensitive side” of the convicted drug lord emerge during difficult moments, such as the death of El Chapo’s mother in 2023.
“I have seen his mental health rapidly deteriorate, [and it] has gotten to the point that I fear for him,” Sabatino wrote. “He has trouble communicating and putting his thoughts in a coherent manner.”
In January, Sabatino sent a letter to the court asking to withdraw his request to be granted “next friend” status.
Lane said the two men were separated by prison officials and can no longer communicate with each other.
Meanwhile, El Chapo’s other letter-writing supporter has not given up on pushing the court to send him home. The latest message referenced Mexico’s president, and noted that the imprisoned cartel leader has not attempted “any type of escaping from the U.S.A.”
“Claudia Sheinbaum has a safe place for my incarceration,” it said.
As the top boss of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán ran a multinational drug-smuggling enterprise despite being functionally illiterate, having dropped out of school around the third grade.
Evidence presented at El Chapo’s trial, which ended in 2019 with his conviction and a sentence of life in U.S. prison with no parole, showed that he tended to scribble messages to underlings in broken Spanish.
So when a series of letters, handwritten in English and allegedly signed by El Chapo, recently began arriving at the federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., they posed a mystery. Did El Chapo really write them? And if not, who was writing on his behalf?
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York received a letter, left, on June 23, 2026, purportedly signed by imprisoned Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. He sent the federal court in Brooklyn a handwritten message in Spanish, right, on July 15, 2025.
(Eastern District Court of New York )
More than 20 letters attributed to El Chapo have been received by the court, with the first dated April 10 and the latest posted Tuesday on his case docket in the Eastern District of New York.
They have voiced a litany of complaints about the unfairness of El Chapo’s prosecution and requested that he be sent back to Mexico.
“I did no harm to no one,” said one, dated April 25. “I was known in my country not for bad things, the good things I’ve done.”
The letters have drawn mockery and outrage online, with Mexican citizens fuming over the notorious drug lord, who twice escaped from prison in his home country, apparently having the gall to think he could be set free.
Others wondered whether El Chapo somehow managed to learn English behind bars, or whether he was perhaps using the public court filings to send coded messages that enabled him to continue calling the shots for his cartel.
The messages carry the return address of ADX Florence, the maximum-security federal prison in Colorado where the onetime kingpin is housed in strict isolation. His attorneys, however, note that the envelopes were postmarked in Jackson, Miss., not Colorado.
“They’re not him,” Mariel Colón Miró, a member of El Chapo’s defense team, told The Times. “We have an investigation into who is sending them.”
Colón Miró emphasized that she and other attorneys who represent El Chapo played no part in sending the messages.
“It’s somebody crazy,” she said.
A U.S. law enforcement source familiar with El Chapo’s case but not authorized to speak publicly called the letters “complete bull—.”
“Not from him,” the source said. “Probably someone mentally ill.”
Though often rambling and incoherent, the letters have taken up the court’s time. Judge Brian Cogan, who presided over El Chapo’s trial, responded to the first five letters received by the court with a May 4 order denying their requests.
“Some of these documents make no sense and none of them have any legal merit,” the judge wrote.
Still, the letters keep coming. One this month seemed to offer a clue and, like the others, included words underlined seemingly at random.
Postmarked June 10, it said that “the letters that are being received to the courts is my legal petition of Aubrey Gideon in Greenwood, MS 38930 is his rights and the connection with my lawyer on fighting for my freedom in the U.S.A.”
Public records show an Aubrey Gideon has lived in the town of Greenwood and was convicted of cocaine possession in 2009. Messages sent to email addresses associated with Gideon went unreturned, and several phone numbers listed for him were out of service.
In December 2022, Gideon sent a letter to the Mississippi Supreme Court that said he had been “suspended” from visiting the post office in Greenwood over some type of incident. Gideon asked the state’s high court to intervene on his behalf.
The Mississippi letter references a local judge, Carlos Palmer, who told The Times that he couldn’t recall what precipitated Gideon’s missive. Palmer said Gideon is a fixture on the streets of their town.
“Mr. Gideon walks around downtown Greenwood every single day,” Palmer said. “I don’t know what his circumstances is. He’s been in court several times for several situations.”
It’s highly unlikely that El Chapo has been able to communicate with Gideon — or anyone else outside of his attorneys and his two teenage daughters, who are the only ones approved to visit and speak with him under restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures.
In July 2024, El Chapo filed a civil rights lawsuit in the District of Colorado federal court seeking to lift the measures and improve the conditions of his confinement.
“On a typical day,” one court filing said, El Chapo “has no contact with a single other human being who shares a language in which they can communicate.”
El Chapo said he has been unable to get adequate sleep and experiences “near-constant severe sinus, ear, nose, and throat pain,” which he attributed to hot air being frequently pumped into his cell.
“I am suffering from severe sleep deprivation as a result of being woken up repeatedly throughout the night, every night by this hot air,” he wrote.
He also told the court he does not receive any counseling inside the prison. “I have no one to help me cope with the effects and trauma of solitary confinement,” he wrote.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit on June 9.
A pro bono attorney appointed by the court to represent El Chapo in the case, David Lane, said they plan to file a new complaint on his behalf. Lane said the extreme isolation is unconstitutional, violating the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
“He has not seen actual sunshine or felt the sun on his skin in years,” Lane said. “He does get outside exercise in a cage, but it’s in the shade.”
According to Lane and court filings in the Eastern District of New York, for a time El Chapo was able to communicate with a prisoner in a neighboring cell by shouting through the walls.
That inmate, identified in court filings as James “Jimmy” Sabatino — a reputed Gambino crime family associate sentenced to prison in 2017 for stealing millions worth of jewelry through an elaborate con — wrote to the Brooklyn federal court as well, in November last year.
Sabatino described how he and El Chapo were housed next to each other in an ultra-secure part of ADX, an area he dubbed “The Suites.”
Sabatino wrote that, although he spoke little Spanish and El Chapo barely any English, they were able to strike up a friendship. Sabatino said he saw “the sensitive side” of the convicted drug lord emerge during difficult moments, such as the death of El Chapo’s mother in 2023.
“I have seen his mental health rapidly deteriorate, [and it] has gotten to the point that I fear for him,” Sabatino wrote. “He has trouble communicating and putting his thoughts in a coherent manner.”
In January, Sabatino sent a letter to the court asking to withdraw his request to be granted “next friend” status.
Lane said the two men were separated by prison officials and can no longer communicate with each other.
Meanwhile, El Chapo’s other letter-writing supporter has not given up on pushing the court to send him home. The latest message referenced Mexico’s president, and noted that the imprisoned cartel leader has not attempted “any type of escaping from the U.S.A.”
“Claudia Sheinbaum has a safe place for my incarceration,” it said.
As the top boss of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán ran a multinational drug-smuggling enterprise despite being functionally illiterate, having dropped out of school around the third grade.
Evidence presented at El Chapo’s trial, which ended in 2019 with his conviction and a sentence of life in U.S. prison with no parole, showed that he tended to scribble messages to underlings in broken Spanish.
So when a series of letters, handwritten in English and allegedly signed by El Chapo, recently began arriving at the federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., they posed a mystery. Did El Chapo really write them? And if not, who was writing on his behalf?
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York received a letter, left, on June 23, 2026, purportedly signed by imprisoned Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. He sent the federal court in Brooklyn a handwritten message in Spanish, right, on July 15, 2025.
(Eastern District Court of New York )
More than 20 letters attributed to El Chapo have been received by the court, with the first dated April 10 and the latest posted Tuesday on his case docket in the Eastern District of New York.
They have voiced a litany of complaints about the unfairness of El Chapo’s prosecution and requested that he be sent back to Mexico.
“I did no harm to no one,” said one, dated April 25. “I was known in my country not for bad things, the good things I’ve done.”
The letters have drawn mockery and outrage online, with Mexican citizens fuming over the notorious drug lord, who twice escaped from prison in his home country, apparently having the gall to think he could be set free.
Others wondered whether El Chapo somehow managed to learn English behind bars, or whether he was perhaps using the public court filings to send coded messages that enabled him to continue calling the shots for his cartel.
The messages carry the return address of ADX Florence, the maximum-security federal prison in Colorado where the onetime kingpin is housed in strict isolation. His attorneys, however, note that the envelopes were postmarked in Jackson, Miss., not Colorado.
“They’re not him,” Mariel Colón Miró, a member of El Chapo’s defense team, told The Times. “We have an investigation into who is sending them.”
Colón Miró emphasized that she and other attorneys who represent El Chapo played no part in sending the messages.
“It’s somebody crazy,” she said.
A U.S. law enforcement source familiar with El Chapo’s case but not authorized to speak publicly called the letters “complete bull—.”
“Not from him,” the source said. “Probably someone mentally ill.”
Though often rambling and incoherent, the letters have taken up the court’s time. Judge Brian Cogan, who presided over El Chapo’s trial, responded to the first five letters received by the court with a May 4 order denying their requests.
“Some of these documents make no sense and none of them have any legal merit,” the judge wrote.
Still, the letters keep coming. One this month seemed to offer a clue and, like the others, included words underlined seemingly at random.
Postmarked June 10, it said that “the letters that are being received to the courts is my legal petition of Aubrey Gideon in Greenwood, MS 38930 is his rights and the connection with my lawyer on fighting for my freedom in the U.S.A.”
Public records show an Aubrey Gideon has lived in the town of Greenwood and was convicted of cocaine possession in 2009. Messages sent to email addresses associated with Gideon went unreturned, and several phone numbers listed for him were out of service.
In December 2022, Gideon sent a letter to the Mississippi Supreme Court that said he had been “suspended” from visiting the post office in Greenwood over some type of incident. Gideon asked the state’s high court to intervene on his behalf.
The Mississippi letter references a local judge, Carlos Palmer, who told The Times that he couldn’t recall what precipitated Gideon’s missive. Palmer said Gideon is a fixture on the streets of their town.
“Mr. Gideon walks around downtown Greenwood every single day,” Palmer said. “I don’t know what his circumstances is. He’s been in court several times for several situations.”
It’s highly unlikely that El Chapo has been able to communicate with Gideon — or anyone else outside of his attorneys and his two teenage daughters, who are the only ones approved to visit and speak with him under restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures.
In July 2024, El Chapo filed a civil rights lawsuit in the District of Colorado federal court seeking to lift the measures and improve the conditions of his confinement.
“On a typical day,” one court filing said, El Chapo “has no contact with a single other human being who shares a language in which they can communicate.”
El Chapo said he has been unable to get adequate sleep and experiences “near-constant severe sinus, ear, nose, and throat pain,” which he attributed to hot air being frequently pumped into his cell.
“I am suffering from severe sleep deprivation as a result of being woken up repeatedly throughout the night, every night by this hot air,” he wrote.
He also told the court he does not receive any counseling inside the prison. “I have no one to help me cope with the effects and trauma of solitary confinement,” he wrote.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit on June 9.
A pro bono attorney appointed by the court to represent El Chapo in the case, David Lane, said they plan to file a new complaint on his behalf. Lane said the extreme isolation is unconstitutional, violating the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
“He has not seen actual sunshine or felt the sun on his skin in years,” Lane said. “He does get outside exercise in a cage, but it’s in the shade.”
According to Lane and court filings in the Eastern District of New York, for a time El Chapo was able to communicate with a prisoner in a neighboring cell by shouting through the walls.
That inmate, identified in court filings as James “Jimmy” Sabatino — a reputed Gambino crime family associate sentenced to prison in 2017 for stealing millions worth of jewelry through an elaborate con — wrote to the Brooklyn federal court as well, in November last year.
Sabatino described how he and El Chapo were housed next to each other in an ultra-secure part of ADX, an area he dubbed “The Suites.”
Sabatino wrote that, although he spoke little Spanish and El Chapo barely any English, they were able to strike up a friendship. Sabatino said he saw “the sensitive side” of the convicted drug lord emerge during difficult moments, such as the death of El Chapo’s mother in 2023.
“I have seen his mental health rapidly deteriorate, [and it] has gotten to the point that I fear for him,” Sabatino wrote. “He has trouble communicating and putting his thoughts in a coherent manner.”
In January, Sabatino sent a letter to the court asking to withdraw his request to be granted “next friend” status.
Lane said the two men were separated by prison officials and can no longer communicate with each other.
Meanwhile, El Chapo’s other letter-writing supporter has not given up on pushing the court to send him home. The latest message referenced Mexico’s president, and noted that the imprisoned cartel leader has not attempted “any type of escaping from the U.S.A.”
“Claudia Sheinbaum has a safe place for my incarceration,” it said.
