The wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was arrested in the United States on Monday. She is accused of helping her husband manages his million-dollar cartel and plans his arrogant escape from a Mexican prison in 2015.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, a 31-year-old former beauty queen, was arrested at Virginia Dulles International Airport and is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Tuesday. She is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico.
Her arrest is the latest twist in the bloody, multinational saga in which Guzman, the longtime head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, was involved. Guzman, whose two dramatic prisoners fled Mexico, was a legend that he and his family were anything but invulnerable, was extradited to the United States in 2017 and is serving a life sentence.
Now his wife, with whom he has two young daughters, is accused of helping him run his criminal empire. Coronel has been charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana in the US. The Department of Justice also accused her of helping her husband out of a Mexican prison in 2015 and participating in the planning of a second prison escape before Guzman was extradited to the United States.
Coronel’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, declined to comment Monday night.
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As Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, Guzman ran a cartel responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs to the United States during his 25-year rule, prosecutors said in recent court documents. They also said that his ‘army of sicarios’, or ‘beaten men’, was on command to kidnap, torture and kill everyone in his path.
His jail breaks became the legend and raised serious questions about whether Mexico’s legal system could hold him accountable. In one case, he escaped through an entrance under the shower in his cell to a mile-long illuminated tunnel with a motorcycle on the track. According to prosecutors, the planning for the escape was extensive, and his wife played a key role.
According to court documents, Coronel worked with Guzman’s sons and a witness, who is working closely with the U.S. government, to organize the construction of the underground tunnel that Guzman used to escape from the Altiplano prison to deliver To prevent US. smuggled a piece of land near the prison, firearms and an armored truck and a GPS watch for him so that they could ‘determine exactly where the tunnel should be built with an access point accessible to him’, the court documents read.
Guzman was sentenced in 2019 to life in prison.
US law enforcement via AP
Coronel, who was a beauty queen in her teens, regularly attended Guzman’s trial, even when evidence involved her in his jail breaks. The two, who have turned more than thirty years old, have been together since at least 2007 and their twin daughters were born in 2011.
Her father, Ines Coronel Barreras, was arrested in 2013 along with one of his sons and several other men in a warehouse containing hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border from Douglas, Arizona. Months earlier, the U.S. Treasury had announced financial sanctions against her father over his alleged drug trafficking.
After Guzman was arrested after his escape, Coronel urged the Mexican government to improve her husband’s prison conditions. And after he was convicted in 2019, she started going to a clothing line in his name.
Mike Vigil, the former head of international operations of the drug enforcement administration, said Coronel “has been involved in the drug trade since she was a child. She knows the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel.”
He said she might be willing to work together.
“She has a great motivation, and that’s her twins,” Vigil said.