The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has cleared Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to hold in-person and telephone meetings with his recently appointed attorney, Israel José Encinosa, at the ADX-Florence super-maximum-security facility in Colorado. The authorization, dated 11 August 2025 and disclosed in a filing to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, lifts previous restrictions that had blocked direct contact between the convicted drug trafficker and his counsel. Encinosa told the court that he may now conduct “continuous telephone calls and personal conferences” with Guzmán under standard attorney-client protections. Guzmán, the former head of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, is serving a life sentence plus 30 years after his 2019 conviction on drug-trafficking and conspiracy charges. The approval follows weeks of complaints from Guzmán, who had written to Judge Cogan alleging that prison officials were not honoring earlier court permissions for legal visits.