García Luna is moved to the high-security prison that houses El Chapo Guzmán.

Genaro García Luna has been transferred to Florence, the maximum-security prison in Colorado, USA, which also houses Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán. The change has been notified in the system of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where the former Mexican Secretary of Security has the registration number 59745-177. García Luna was previously at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City. U.S. authorities have not explained the reasons for the transfer.

The former drug czar of Mexico during Felipe Calderón’s government (2006-2012) will spend his upcoming days in one of the most feared prisons in the United States, known as the Alcatraz of the Rocky Mountains. The prison is located 150 kilometers from Denver, the state capital, in an isolated area of an old mining region. Known as ADX, ADMAX, or Supermax, this facility houses 360 inmates, including some of the most dangerous in the country.

García Luna’s judicial path seems to mirror that of the powerful founder of the Sinaloa Cartel. Both were sentenced in the same court and before the same judge, Brian Cogan of the Eastern District of New York, and now both will be monitored in the same prison. El Chapo was transferred to Florence just hours after his verdict in the Brooklyn court, which sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2019.

His lawyers and the narcotrafficker himself have criticized the conditions he faces inside the prison. “Due to the treatment at ADMAX, I now suffer from headaches, memory loss, muscle cramps, stress, and depression,” the kingpin wrote in 2021 in a letter sent to a federal court in Denver: “The treatment I receive is cruel and unjust.” Since then, letters have continued, and Guzmán Loera insists on requesting visits from his wife Emma Coronel or access to English courses. In one of his latest letters, in October 2024, the kingpin stated: “I have been in the U.S. for over seven years since my extradition, and to this day, I have not seen the sun.”

In Florence, inmates are subjected to extreme isolation. They live in a cell three meters long and two meters wide with no more human contact than that of the guards who handcuff them to leave. They typically spend about 23 hours a day inside, where the bed, table, and seat are made of concrete. One of El Chapo’s defenders, Mariel Colón, reported that, for example, the kingpin has two 15-minute phone calls a month, and his letters can take up to 10 months to be delivered due to inspections.

At Supermax, Frenchman Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted for the 9/11 attacks, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing, who awaits death row in the prison, are also monitored. In one of its cells, Theodore Ted Kaczynski, known as Unabomber, who caused three deaths and 23 injuries with explosive letters he sent for years in the U.S., died at the age of 81.

This is the space to which García Luna has now been sent. The 56-year-old former official was sentenced to 38 years in prison for drug trafficking and organized crime at the end of 2024. In the trial of the highest-ranking Mexican politician to step into a U.S. court, it was proven that, as Secretary of Security, he had received millions in bribes and collaborated for over two decades with the Sinaloa Cartel. The corrections office now notes that his location is ADMAX and that his release is not scheduled until June 19, 2052.