El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel, arrested on US drug charges

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, 31, was apprehended at Dulles International Airport and is facing charges of conspiracy to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin, five kilograms or more of cocaine, 1,000 kilograms or more of marijuana, and 500 grams or more of methamphetamines for unlawful importation into the country, according to a news release from the Justice Department.

According to a criminal complaint, “there is probable cause to believe that; from at least in or about 2014 and at least on or about January 19, 2017, Coronel did knowingly, intentionally, and willfully conspired with Guzmán and others” to distribute drugs.

Prosecutors said Coronel conspired with others to assist her husband; in his July 11, 2015, escape from a prison in Mexico. After Guzmán was rearrested in Mexico in January 2016; his wife is alleged to have engaged in planning yet another prison escape before he was extradited to the United States in January 2017, officials said.

Coronel was moved to the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia late Monday night; she is expected to appear by video conference for her initial court appearance on Tuesday. Her attorney Jeffrey Lichtman declined to comment Monday night.

Guzman ran a cartel responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign; prosecutors said in recent court papers. They also said his “army of sicarios,” or “hitmen,” was under orders to kidnap, torture, and kill anyone who got in his way.

Mike Vigil; the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former chief of international operations; said Coronel “has been involved in the drug trade since she was a little girl. She knows the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel.”

He said she could be willing to cooperate.

“She has a huge motivation, and that is her twins,” Vigil said.

Guzmán and Coronel, who was a beauty queen in her teens, have been married since 2007.

Her father, Ines Coronel Barreras, was also a member of Guzmán’s drug cartel. He was arrested in 2013 with one of his sons and several other men; in a warehouse with hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border from Douglas, Arizona.