The wife of notorious Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman is being released from prison in the United States.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 34, was released from federal custody on Wednesday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed.
The wife of the notorious Mexican drug lord was serving a three-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas. She was moved to a halfway house in Long Beach, California earlier this year as authorities prepared to release her early.
Coronel was born in the United States but was raised in rural Durango, Mexico, the same area where Guzman’s criminal organization gained power in the 1990s and 2000s.
She is the daughter of Inés Coronel Barreras, one of Guzman’s lieutenants in the Sinaloa Cartel, who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for drug trafficking in Mexico.
Coronel was a former teenage beauty pageant queen in Mexico. Guzman married her in 2007, shortly after she turned 18.
In 2011, Coronel gave birth to Guzman’s twin daughters. They were born at a hospital in Lancaster, California and hold US citizenship.
In 2021, she pleaded guilty to federal charges for conspiracy to traffic cocaine, methamphetamines, and other narcotics. She also pleaded guilty to money laundering and property exchange with a known drug trafficker.
Prosecutors argued that she acted as a courier for her husband. In court, she begged a federal judge for leniency.
She agreed to forfeit $1.5million from her criminal proceeds and was sentenced to three years in prison. Her sentence was later reduced.
In August, Guzman filed paperwork asking a federal judge to allow Coronel to visit him in prison after her release.
Guzman is being held at ADX Florence, one of the highest security prisons in the US. It is unclear if his request will be accepted by authorities, or if his wife and daughters want to visit him.
Guzman, now 66, has at least 13 other children from three other wives. Several of his sons, known Los Chapitos, were charged in the US for maintaining their father’s empire and transitioning into trafficking fentanyl.
One of Los Chapitos, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, was arrested in Culiacan in January after a tense battle with the Mexican military.
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