The wife of the drug trafficking organization El Chapo was arrested on suspicion of drugs in the United States

Mexican drug tycoon Joaquín Guzman’s wife was arrested in the United States on Monday.She is accused of helping her husband Run his multi-billion dollar cartel And in 2015 he plans his bold escape from a Mexican prison.

Emma Coronel Aispro, a 31-year-old former beauty contest queen, has been arrested at Dulles International Airport in Virginia and will 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 a bloody multinational story involving Guzman, the longtime head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. After two dramatic jailbreaks in Mexico, Guzman became a legend that he and his family were barely touched, but was handed over to the United States in 2017 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

His wife, who now has two young daughters, has been charged with helping him run a criminal empire. In a single criminal accusation, Coronel was charged with a plot to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and marijuana in the United States.The Justice Department also helped her husband escape from a Mexican prison in 2015 and accused her of participating in a second plan Escape from prison before Guzman was expelled to the United States.

Coronel’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman declined to comment on Monday night.

As Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficking organization, Guzman ran a cartel responsible for smuggling cocaine and other drug piles into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors said in a recent court document. Stated. They also said that his “military of Cicario” or “Hitman” was ordered to kidnap, torture and kill those who disturbed him.

His prison break became legendary and raised serious questions about whether the Mexican judiciary could hold him accountable. In one case, he escaped from the entrance under the shower in his cell into a one-mile-long illuminated tunnel with a motorcycle on rails. According to prosecutors, the escape plans were widespread and the wife played an important role.

Court documents, in collaboration with Guzman’s son and witnesses currently working with the U.S. government, organized the construction of an underground tunnel that Guzman used to escape from Altiplano prison and prevent his expulsion to the United States. I blame him for doing it. By smuggling GPS watches on land near prisons, firearms and armored vehicles, “we can pinpoint his exact location to build a tunnel with an entrance he can access,” court documents said. I am.

Guzman was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019.

Coronel, the queen of the teen beauty contest, regularly attended Guzman’s trial, even when the testimony involved her in a prison break. The two, who are more than 30 years old, have been together since at least 2007, and their twin daughters were born in 2011.

Her father, Ines Coronel Valeras, was arrested in 2013 with one of his sons and several other men in a warehouse containing hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border from Douglas, Arizona. I did. A few months ago, the US Treasury issued economic sanctions on his father on suspicion of drug trafficking.

After Guzman was re-arrested after his escape, Coronel worked with the Mexican government to improve the condition of her husband’s prison. And after he was convicted in 2019, she moved to launch a clothing line in his name.

“I’ve been involved in drug trading since I was a child, and she knows how the Sinaloa Cartel works,” said Mike Vigil, a former International Head of Drug Enforcement Administration.

He said she would be happy to cooperate.

“She has a lot of motivation and that’s her twins,” Vigil said.