Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, has left prison following an agreement reached with US authorities to plead guilty to several drug trafficking offenses and is being held in a secret location while he continues to collaborate.
López, known as ‘El Ratón’, was released from prison this Monday, July 14, after pleading guilty last Friday in a Chicago court as part of a collaboration agreement with the US Department of Justice, much to the anger of the Mexican authorities who arrested him.
After spending the weekend in the Chicago Metropolitan Jail, ‘El Chapo’s’ son has left the facility, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), to an undisclosed location, as reported by the newspaper ‘El Universo’.
This release is part of a collaboration agreement with the United States, within a witness protection program. If the decision is satisfactory for prosecutors, they will recommend to the judge in charge, Sharon Johnson Coleman, a reduction in the sentence to below life imprisonment.
The sentence will be set in January 2026. That is the time the leader of Los Chapitos—one of the factions into which the Sinaloa Cartel is divided—has to provide additional information that will facilitate new proceedings against the organization once led by his father and his accomplices.
Ovidio is not the only of “El Chapo’s” offspring who has decided to cooperate with the justice system in search of some leniency in their sentences. Joaquín Guzmán López voluntarily surrendered last year after landing at an airport near El Paso, Texas, along with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, another cartel boss, who claims to have been sold out by the Guzmán family.
The collaboration agreement between “El Ratón” and US prosecutors has sparked outrage in Mexico, which has criticized the Donald Trump administration for not including them in the case, despite the fact that they were the ones who carried the brunt of the operation to arrest him.
