Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, left the Chicago Metropolitan Jail again to remain in custody at an undisclosed location after the hearing on Friday, July 11, in which he pleaded guilty to four counts of drug trafficking and organized crime.
Last week, Ovidio Guzmán was temporarily returned to the prison for his change of plea hearing, which he held in the Federal Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois on July 12.
After the hearing, he was returned to the prison, but according to Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) records, he left the jail on Monday, July 14.
This does not mean that El Chapo Guzmán’s son is free, but it does mean that he is being held outside conventional prisons, within a protection program for potential cooperating witnesses operated by the U.S. Marshals Office.
It should be noted that the plea agreement El Ratón signed with U.S. prosecutors, which has already been approved by Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, establishes that the drug trafficker will collaborate in the coming months as a witness, providing information that will advance new investigations or facilitate prosecutions against accomplices of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Suppose the U.S. government deems this collaboration to be of quality and useful. In that case, federal prosecutors have agreed to recommend to the judge a sentence below the life sentence limit warranted by the crimes for which he pleaded guilty.
It is worth mentioning that this sentence will be set in January 2026. In the aforementioned agreement, it was established that while this period elapses, Ovidio Guzmán must remain in custody.
