El Chapo Escape New York 2018

Police standby outside the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse as the “El Chapo” Guzman trial takes place on January 7, 2019 in New York. Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images Sales. El Chapo was convicted of more than a dozen felony charges on Feb. 12, 2019, including money laundering, conspiracy, firearms and international drug trafficking. He was sentenced to life in prison. FILE - In this Jan. 17, 2019 file photo, Emma Coronel Aispuro, center, leaves a Brooklyn federal court in New York after attending the trial of her husband Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman. FILE - In this Feb. 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 “El Chapo” Guzman has been arrested on international drug trafficking charges at an airport in Virginia.

A Brooklyn federal judge set an April 2018 trial date for Mexican drug lord Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman. Federal prosecutors told Judge Brian Cogan on Friday that they need up to three months to pin.

El Chapo Escape New York 2018 Torrent

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.

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.'

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.

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

The Mexican drug kingpin known as El Chapo — “Shorty' — is said to have first met the elegant teenage daughter of one of his lieutenants at a small-town dance. Smitten, he later hosted a lavish bash to support her bid to become a beauty contest queen.

She was just 18 — and more than three decades his junior — when they married in 2007 in the town of La Angostura, deep in the Sierra Madre and in the heart of the so-called Golden Triangle of heroin production in Mexico.

Years later, decked out in designer garb and spiked heels, she was a paparazzi-pleasing daily presence as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman faced his legal reckoning in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn as the leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

On Monday, U.S. authorities arrested Emma Coronel Aispuro at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, alleging that she was more than the loyal and fashion-conscious wife of the world’s most notorious narco.

Mirroring some of the allegations that felled her husband, Coronel — a citizen of both the U.S. and Mexico — faces charges of participating in a broad conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana into the United States.

After Guzman was imprisoned in Mexico, an FBI affidavit states, his wife acted as a 'go-between and messenger,' relaying his orders to his lieutenants and his four sons, all of whom are allegedly high-ranking cartel members.

U.S. authorities allege she assisted in his sensational 2015 prison escape, when Guzmán dropped into a hole scooped out beneath the shower in his Mexican cell and hopped onto a rail-mounted motorcycle, which whisked him to freedom through a mile-long tunnel.

Coronel allegedly met with Guzmán’s son to discuss the plan, which had involved purchasing land and a warehouse near the prison, along with firearms and an armored truck, according to an FBI affidavit.

Guzmán was captured six months later in the Pacific Coast city of Los Mochis, Mexico.

The FBI said his wife later helped organize a second escape scheme for which a Guzmán confederate received about $1 million — and told a “cooperating witness” that a senior prison official had been paid $2 million to help. The prison chief was not identified.

But that plan never came to fruition. Guzmán was extradited to the United States in January 2017.

A U.S. District judge in New York sentenced Guzmán to life in prison in July 2019 after a jury found him guilty of drug-trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder.

Prosecutors also sought an order demanding Guzman turn over more than $12.6 billion in assets — their approximation of his drug earnings over the decades. His lawyers called the request preposterous and said he didn't have anything close to that.

With her husband n U.S. custody, Coronel has been a frequent poster on Instagram and occasional visitor to the United States.

In September 2018, as Guzmán and his lawyers prepared for trial in New York, photos showed up on Instagram detailing a birthday party that Coronel threw for the couple’s twin daughters, who were born in 2011 at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster.

The decadent bash featured carnival rides, hundreds of pink balloons and a set featuring gold chandeliers and a rose-hued throne.

Coronel wore 4-inch heels and posed in front of a fake pink mansion and a long table covered with flowers, desserts and a towering birthday cake.

The next year, as Guzmán, 64, awaited sentencing, Coronel said on Instagram that she was launching a fashion line inspired by her husband’s style. His image — square jaw, beady eyes, black mustache — is emblazoned on ball caps, T-shirts and posters in Mexico, especially in his home state of Sinaloa, where many regard him as a hero and Robin Hood figure who helped the poor.

In court, Coronel was equal parts spectacle and enigma. She spent almost every day of her husband's trial in the second row of the gallery, silent but impossible to miss.

By opening statements, the pair had not had any direct contact in two years. Still, her petition to be allowed to hug him once before the trial began was denied.

Guzmán would search for her from the moment he was led into the courtroom each day. The couple often waved and flirted, sometimes to the consternation of U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan.

When she brought their twins to court, Guzmán couldn’t tear his eyes from them. Coronel often fussed to her husband's lawyers about his ties, his expression, his health.

Although she rarely spoke to the press, she never shied from the cameras outside of court. Her chic outfits — designer jeans, sky-high stilettos, military blazers and velvet body suits — got plenty of attention, and she was fastidious about her makeup. But suspicion hung over her.

Her uncle, Ignacio Coronel — the so-called King of Crystal for his part in the smuggling of methamphetamines to the United States — was killed in a 2010 shootout with the Mexican military. He was said to be number three in the Sinaloa cartel hierarchy. Authorities allege that Coronel’s father, who is currently imprisoned in Mexico, “coordinated narcotics transports” for the Sinaloa cartel.

During the trial, many speculated she was more involved in her husband’s business dealings than she let on. She was obliged to pass through the metal detector twice before a sensitive witness was brought in to testify, out of concern she might smuggle in a cellphone to take his picture.

As the weeks dragged on, it was impossible for Coronel to conceal her boredom. She fidgeted in her seat and played with her long hair, and was scolded for using her lawyer’s phone in the courtroom.

Her arrest reverberated across social media, especially in Mexico, where many suggested tongue-in-cheek that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador would help get her returned to Mexico — as he did in the case of a former Mexican defense chief arrested in Los Angeles last year for alleged drug trafficking.

“Don’t worry Emma,” wrote ex-President Vicente Fox on Twitter. “The president will come to the rescue!!”

El Chapo Escape New York 2018

McDonnell reported from Mexico City and Sharp from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Kate Linthicum in Mexico City, Tracy Wilkinson in Washington and special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez in Mexico City also contributed to this report.

El Chapo Escape 2015

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.