Wife of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Arrested in Virginia

The wife of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the now jailed former leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested on over her alleged involvement in international drug trafficking, the US Department of Justice said.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, a regular attendee at her husband’s trial two years ago, was arrested at Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia, and is expected to appear in a federal court in Washington on Tuesday. Coronel was charged in a one-count complaint with conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines for unlawful importation into the United States, the Justice Department said.

El Chapo Guzman was convicted in February 2019 of trafficking tons of drugs and engaging in multiple murder conspiracies as a top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s largest, most violent drug trafficking organizations. Court papers charge that Coronel Aispuro worked with Guzman’s sons and a witness, who is now cooperating with the U.S. government, to organize the construction of the underground tunnel that Guzman used to escape from the Altiplano prison in Mexico to prevent him from being extradited to the USA. The plot included purchasing a piece of land near the prison, firearms and an armored truck and smuggling him a GPS watch so they could “pinpoint his exact whereabouts so as to construct the tunnel with an entry point accessible to him,” the court papers say.