The United States has postponed Joaquín Guzmán López’s intermediate hearing until March 2027, pushing back the stage of the case that was supposed to prepare the way for sentencing. Guzmán López pleaded guilty to narcotics offenses in November 2025, and the new date stretches out a closely watched case tied to the son of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán and a member of Los Chapitos.
The delay matters because the hearing was not a side note; it was part of the sentencing process after his guilty plea. For readers following the El Chapo case family, it means the timeline that began with the plea in November 2025 now runs more than a year longer before the next courtroom step arrives.
Guzmán López is one of the sons of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, and Los Chapitos is the faction of the Cártel de Sinaloa led by the founder’s sons. That puts the hearing inside a larger criminal saga that still reaches across borders. In July 2024, United States authorities detained Guzmán López and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in Santa Teresa, Nuevo México, after the two arrived there from events set in motion at Huertos del Pedregal near Culiacán.
That earlier episode is still clouded by competing accounts. Zambada said in a letter released through Frank Pérez in August 2024 that Guzmán López summoned him under the pretext of mediating a dispute involving Héctor Melesio Cuén Ojeda and Rocha Moya over control of the Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa. He also said Cuén Ojeda was killed the same day and in the same place where he said he was seized. The FGR later found Cuén Ojeda’s blood at Huertos del Pedregal and rejected the original version that placed the killing at a gas station in Culiacán.
Fausto Ernesto Corrales Rodríguez was later arrested by the FGR on 19 d, a reminder that the case still keeps producing offshoots even as the main sentencing track slows down. The next fixed point now is March 2027, and the postponement shows that the legal fallout from the 2024 operation is still far from over.
