Emma Coronel Aispuro on January 17, 2019 leaving a court in Brooklyn, New York, where El Chapo was being tried. Kevin Hagen (AP)
New life for Emma Coronel. Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán’s wife has been placed under house arrest after spending 15 months in a minimum-security prison. The Instagram influencer and third wife of one of the world’s most famous drug lords has been transferred from Texas to California, where she will spend the final weeks of her sentence on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Colonel, 33, will be released September 13.
Coronel is located in San Pedro, a coastal community south of Los Angeles near the Port of Long Beach. The Univision chain has documented that the drug dealer was transferred to California on May 30 from FMC’s Carswell prison near Dallas, where she is being held in facilities run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The complex is managed by a contractor from the Department of Justice.
Coronel is part of a nationwide social rehabilitation project that eases the transition to freedom for inmates in the final stages of their sentences. The system involves more than 7,000 people in 22 centers across the country. This allows inmates to leave prison facilities during the day to seek work. They also offer medical help for becoming addicted to drugs and other illegal substances, advice on personal finances, and help with finding housing. At night, however, everyone must return to their cells, which resemble small condominiums.
In November 2021, Coronel, a Mexican-American national, was sentenced to 36 months in prison for activities related to the Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal organization led by El Chapo, 33 years his senior. In order to obtain a more favorable sentence, the drug lord’s couple pleaded guilty in a Washington court to having smuggled at least five kilos of cocaine, another kilo of heroin and at least half a kilo of methamphetamine into the United States.
During the trial, it became clear that Coronel also played a very important role in the famous escape from Mexico’s Altiplano prison, in which El Chapo starred. The US judicial system confirmed that Emma held some pre-escape meetings, the second at the expense of the drug dealer, and that she even facilitated the purchase of the property to which the tunnel dug for Guzmán Loera’s escape led. So that her husband could find his way underground, Coronel gave him a watch with a GPS navigator.
Coronel was arrested on February 22, 2021 while landing at Dulles, Virginia Airport outside of Washington DC. The next day, he began his legal journey, which began with a request from prosecutors for four years in prison. He spent a year in a prison in that state. In February 2022, he arrived at the Texas prison, a hospital and minimum-security facility, where he remained until the end of May.
Coronel lived in California as a child but grew up in Canelas, a remote city in the Mexican state of Durango, nestled in the Golden Triangle. This is the confluence of the Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa regions and one of the dominions of the cartel led by Guzmán Loera and Ismael El Mayo Zambada. Emma, who was a beauty queen in her town, is part of a dynasty that has various ties to the organization. His brothers Omar and Edgar were also arrested and imprisoned. He also helped in the spectacular escape of El Chapo, who is now spending the rest of his life in a maximum security center. Colonel Aispuro, on the other hand, will spend her final weeks as a recluse under lax supervision.
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