Emma Colonel Aispuro, wife of Mexico’s most famous cartel chief, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was arrested in Virginia on drug trafficking charges.
In a statement released on Monday, the U.S. Justice Department said Colonel, 31 – who is a US and Mexican citizen together – was arrested at Dulles International Airport and had his first federal court appearance on Tuesday for video conference.
According to court documents, Colonel is accused of conspiring to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana for import into the United States.
She was also accused of allegedly conspiring to help organize Guzmán’s spectacular escape through a tunnel a mile away from the high-security prison Altiplano in Mexico in July 2015.
Court documents claim that Colonel worked with Guzmán’s children to organize the escape plan, which included buying land near the prison, firearms and an armored truck and smuggling a GPS watch to the cartel chief to ensure that the escape tunnel reached his cell.
“After Guzmán was arrested again in Mexico in January 2016, Colonel Aispuro would have been involved in planning another escape from prison with other people before Guzmán’s extradition to the United States in January 2017,” the statement said.
Guzmán was sentenced to life imprisonment for another 30 years at his trial in New York in 2019.
During the trial, Colonel appeared in court every day, even when the evidence included text messages between her husband and one of his lovers.
Before her husband’s sentence, she told a friendly TV interviewer that Guzmán was a “humble” man and complained that the media had made El Chapo “too famous”.
His arrest should further complicate relations between the governments of Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and occurs when security cooperation between Mexico and the United States appears to have cooled.
Mexican prosecutors recently refused to prosecute the charges against former Defense Secretary Gen Salvador Cienfuegos, who was arrested on landing in Los Angeles last October and accused of protecting a drug cartel.
López Obrador’s government requested his return, accusing the United States of acting without his knowledge and of not acting as an ally. The country’s congress has also passed laws that limit DEA’s actions in Mexico – a move that American officials have warned would undermine cross-border cooperation on security issues.
“The timing of this arrest is interesting,” said Falko Ernst, senior analyst for Mexico at the International Crisis Group. “In part, this seems to send a message from the United States, which says that its traditional tools for arresting high-ranking actors and trying them in the United States are still not a thing of the past – even after Cienfuegos”
US anti-drug agents worked closely in El Chapo prisons in Mexico, where he long ago escaped the law and became a kind of anti-hero in his home state of Sinaloa and beyond.
Emma Coronel was born in Santa Clara, California, and is the daughter of Ines Coronel Barreras, a middle-ranking lieutenant in the Sinaloa cartel.
She grew up in the “Golden Triangle” of Sierra Madre, Mexico, and reportedly met Guzmán at a local festival. She was 17 at the time and Guzmán 51.
The couple has two nine-year-old twin daughters.
Although – like many older drug lords, El Chapo remained discreet despite his fame – his wife sought the spotlight. She launched a clothing line – with some of the items emblazoned with El Chapo’s familiar mustachioed face – and tried to establish herself as a social media influencer with a carefully organized Instagram feed. She even appeared briefly on a reality show in the United States.
“Bragging can be dangerous and, repeatedly, those who overexpose themselves and publicly become targets,” said Ernst.
“If you want to stay out of prison, standing out is not the way to go. It is something that many old school dealers used to live in, but the younger generations seem to have completely forgotten. “
Despite his imprisonment, Guzmán still casts a long shadow in Mexico, and the Sinaloa cartel, now partly led by his sons, remains a formidable force. When Guzmán’s son Ovid was arrested in October 2019, cartel gunmen invaded the city of Culiacán and forced state security forces to release him.
López Obrador defended the move, saying the release of young Guzmán prevented further bloodshed.
The president of Mexico has always avoided speaking ill of El Chapo and, in late March 2020, he briefly met Guzmán’s elderly mother, Maria Consuelo Loera, during a tour of the Sierra Madre.
López Obrador described the big boss’s mother as “a retiree who deserves all my respect – whoever her son is” and confirmed that she had asked him for help getting a US visa so she could visit her son in the “Supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado.