Emma Coronel, El Chapo Guzmán's wife, obtains house arrest

Emma Coronel Aispuro on Jan. 17, 2019, leaving a Brooklyn, New York, courtroom where El Chapo was being tried.Kevin Hagen (AP)

New life for Emma Coronel. The wife of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman 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 most notorious drug lords has been transferred from Texas to California, where she will spend the final weeks of her sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering. Coronel, 33, will be released on September 13.

Coronel is located in San Pedro, a coastal community south of Los Angeles, near the Port of Long Beach. The Univision network has documented that the drug trafficker was transferred on May 30 from the FMC Carswell prison, near Dallas, to California, where he is in facilities that depend on the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The complex is managed by a Justice Department contractor.

Coronel is part of a federal social reintegration project that facilitates the transition to freedom for inmates who are in the final stage of their sentences. The system has more than 7,000 people in 22 centers across the country. It allows inmates to leave prison facilities during the day to seek work. It also offers medical assistance to stop dependence on drugs and other illicit substances, personal finance advice and help with finding a house. At night, however, everyone must return to their cells, which resemble small condominiums.

In November 2021, Coronel, who has Mexican-American citizenship, was sentenced to 36 months in prison for activities related to the Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal organization headed by El Chapo, 33 years her senior. To obtain a more favorable sentence, the capo's partner pleaded guilty before a Washington court to having trafficked to the United States at least five kilos of cocaine, another of heroin and at least half a kilo of methamphetamines.

During the judicial process it was clear that Coronel also had a very important role in the famous escape that El Chapo starred in from the Altiplano prison in Mexico. The US justice verified that Emma held some meetings to prepare the escape, the second in the account of the drug trafficker, and that she even facilitated the purchase of the property where the tunnel that had been dug for Guzmán Loera to escape. So that her husband could orient himself underground, Coronel gave her a watch containing a GPS navigator.

Coronel was arrested on Feb. 22, 2021, when she landed at the airport in Dulles, Virginia, just outside Washington D.C. The next day he began his judicial journey that began with a request from the Prosecutor's Office for four years in prison. He spent a year in a prison in that state. In February 2022, he arrived at the Texas Correctional Center, a hospital and minimum security institution in which he remained until the end of May.

Coronel lived as a child in California, but grew up in Canelas, a remote town in the Mexican state of Durango, nestled in the Golden Triangle. This, the point of confluence of the regions of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa, is one of the areas of control of the cartel commanded by Guzmán Loera and Ismael El Mayo Zambada. Emma, who was a beauty queen in her town, is part of a dynasty that has several ties to the organization. His brothers, Omar and Edgar, were also arrested and imprisoned. He also helped in the spectacular escape starring El Chapo, who today spends the rest of his life in a maximum security center. Colonel Aispuro, on the other hand, will spend her last weeks as an inmate under lax supervision.

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