El Chapo Escape New York 2018

• Did El Chapo Escape Again
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• El Chapo Escape New York 2018

Said to have helped plan her husband’s intricate escape from a high-security Mexican prison, Emma Coronel Aispuro is accused of deep involvement in the inner workings of Mexico’s most notorious cartel.

The wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was arrested in the United States and accused of helping her husband run his multibillion-dollar cartel and plot his audacious escape from a Mexican prison in 2015. Emma Coronel Aispuro, a 31-year-old former beauty queen, was arrested at Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday and is expected to appear in federal court. 12, 2019, file photo, Emma Coronel Aispuro, center, wife of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, leaves federal court in New York. The wife of Mexican drug kingpin and escape artist Joaquin.

WASHINGTON (CN) — The wife of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera appeared before a U.S. judge Tuesday afternoon after her arrest at Dulles International Airport.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, will remain in detention until her defense proposes a bail package at a later court date, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin M. Merriweather ordered at the hearing Tuesday afternoon, which was translated into Spanish for Coronel.

Did El Chapo Escape Again

A dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico, Coronel had been a regular attendee when Guzmán went on trial in New York for three months beginning in 2018.

The U.S. extradited Guzman after two notorious escapes from high-security Mexican prisons. It is said Guzmán accomplished his first escape in 2001 by way of a laundry cart. This was five years before he married Coronel; the former beauty queen was just 17 and he was 49. Today the notorious leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel is serving life in prison plus 30 years.

The newly unsealed charges against Coronel, who was arrested Monday at the Washington-area airport, say she coordinated Guzman’s 2015 escape via an underground tunnel that led to a shower in his cell at Mexico’s high-security Altiplano prison.

Special Agent Eric McGuire explains in an affidavit dated Feb. 17 that Coronel organized the jailbreak with help from two of Guzmán’s sons and a high-ranking cartel associate who will testify for prosecutors. After buying a plot of land near the prison, firearms and an armored truck, according to the affidavit, Coronel smuggled Guzman a GPS watch so they could “pinpoint his exact whereabouts” to lay out the mile-long tunnel, which included ventilation ducts, stairs and a motorbike on rails.

Guzman was arrested again the next year, and McGuire says Coronel tried to have her husband brought back to Altiplano so they could free him again before his extradition to the U.S.

In 2016, Coronel allegedly arranged again to buy more land near the Altiplano prison, ultimately paying $1 million to the cartel associate identified in court papers as Cooperating Witness 1.

When Guzmán was transferred to a facility in Ciudad Juárez, Coronel paid Mexico’s top prison official $2 million to facilitate the Altiplano transfer that never came to be.

Coronel continued showing loyalty to Guzman throughout his imprisonment, lobbying the Mexican government to improve his prison conditions and launching a clothing line in his name after he was convicted in 2019. Together, they have twin daughters.

Prosecutors say Coronel also relayed messages from the cartel to Guzman that enabled him make drug shipments from behind bars. She was “aware” of the Sinaloa cartel’s massive shipments of drugs and “understood the drug proceeds she controlled” were “derived from these shipments,” according to McGuire’s affidavit.

The Sinaloa cartel, which Guzman still heavily controlled from prison, smuggled more cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana from South America to the United States than any other drug trafficker in history.

During his powerful 25-year reign of the multibillion-dollar enterprise, Guzmán directed an army of hit men who murdered thousands.

McGuire’s affidavit explains that Coronel grew up in the drug trade. Both her father and brother, Ines Coronel Barreras and Ines Omar Coronel Aispuro, are serving 10-year sentences for their involvement in the cartel.

Coronel is charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana in the United States. If convicted, Coronel could face 10 years to life in prison, plus a fine up to $10 million.

This news story has been updated with information from a court hearing on Feb. 23, 2021.

The wife of convicted Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera was arrested at a suburban Washington, D.C. airport Monday, for her alleged role in the distribution of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana.

A judge on Tuesday ordered the family's latest defendant, Emma Coronel Aispuro, to remain in custody as her attorneys consider a bail application. But prosecutors told the judge she poses a substantial flight risk and should not be released before trial.

Coronel, 31, a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen who had been a fixture at her husband's 2018-2019 federal trial in Brooklyn, N.Y., monitored the hearing from a detention center via a Spanish translation.

Guzmán, a leader of Mexico's Sinaloa narcotics cartel, was sentenced to life in prison following his trial.

More: Notorious drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán sentenced to life. And U.S. wants his $12.6B fortune.

Coronel is charged in a conspiracy to distribute drugs in the U.S. and is alleged to have assisted in her husband's elaborate 2015 escape from a Mexican prison. She is suspected of plotting another prison escape, which would have been Guzman's third, before his 2017 extradition to the U.S. for trial.

Jeffrey Lichtman, a prominent New York City defense lawyer who was one of Guzman's lawyers during his trial, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather during Tuesday's hearing he represented Coronel and consented to her detention. He said he would consult with prosecutors before proposing a bail package.

However, Anthony Nardozzi, a representative of the U.S. Department of Justice's Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section, told Meriwether that Coronel had ties to Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel, access to substantial funds and no direct ties to the Washington, D.C., area.

She poses a 'serious risk of flight,' he said. 'Pretrial detention is justified.'

Court records filed Monday made the same argument.

'Coronel grew up with knowledge of the narcotics trafficking industry, and married Guzman when she was a teenager,' federal authorities said in court documents. 'Coronel understood the scope of the Sinaloa Cartel’s drug trafficking; Coronel knows and understands the Sinaloa Cartel is the most prolific cartel in Mexico.'

According to the documents, she also was 'aware of multi-ton cocaine shipments, multi-kilo heroin production, multi-ton marijuana shipments, and ton quantity methamphetamine shipments.'

'Coronel understood the drug proceeds she controlled during her marriage to Guzman were derived from these shipments,' federal authorities said.

Citing statements from a cooperating witness, federal authorities said Coronel participated in the plan to construct an underground tunnel linked to the Mexican prison that aided in her husband's most dramatic escape.

She was implicated directly in her husband’s criminal affairs during his 2018-2019 trial in a Brooklyn federal court.

Damaso Lopez Nuñez, a former Guzmán lieutenant who testified as a government witness in January 2019, told jurors his boss was determined to escape from Mexico's maximum-security Altiplano prison, where he was locked up after a squad of Mexican Marines captured him in February 2014.

El Chapo Escape New York 2018 Date

In the brazen July 2015 breakout that captured international headlines, Guzmán slipped into a roughly mile-long tunnel that had been secretly excavated beneath the prison. He made his getaway on a motorcycle attached to rails inside the ventilated and lighted passageway.

Testifying through a Spanish translator, Lopez said Coronel began relaying the boss' instructions during a secret meeting that took place around April 2014 in Culiacán, Mexico.

Guzmán was 'taking the risk ... and thinking of escaping from prison,' Lopez said Guzmán's wife told him, the boss' sons and others during the meeting.

Recounting a follow-up session a month or so later, Lopez testified that Coronel relayed additional instructions from her husband to the plotters: 'A tunnel had to be built and they should start to work.'

El Chapo Escape New York 2018 Torrent

Watching and listening from a courtroom bench at the time, Coronel showed no evident emotion during the testimony as she fidgeted with her nearly waist-length dark hair.

She later declined to comment afterward about Lopez's testimony. Similarly, Brooklyn federal prosecutors at the time declined to discuss why Coronel had not been charged in her husband’s criminal indictment.

El Chapo Escape New York 2018

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: El Chapo's wife arrested on drug trafficking charge; detained without bail after court hearing