The wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Emma Coronel Aispuro, is set to be released from a California prison on Wednesday.

Coronel Aispuro was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021 after she pleaded guilty to drug distribution and money laundering charges related to Guzman's multibillion-dollar criminal empire. As the head of the notorious Sinaloa cartel, Guzman, 66, reigned over the Mexican drug smuggling trade for 25 years. He also maintained an army of hit men prepared to kill, kidnap, and torture.

"We can confirm that Emma Coronel Aispuro is in community confinement overseen by the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Long Beach Residential Reentry Management Office and has a projected release date of Sept. 13," Emery Nelson, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, told USA TODAY.

Asked about why Coronel Aispuro will be released before serving the full three-year sentence, Emery said, "For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any individual, including release plans, timing, or procedures."

The 34-year-old was transferred to the Long Beach facility from a federal prison in Texas earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Coronel Aispuro was arrested in February of 2021 at Dulles International Airport, just outside of Washington, D.C. Several months later, she admitted to a federal court in Washington that she "worked closely" with the Sinaloa Cartel to distribute drugs intended to be smuggled into the U.S.

Prosecutors said Coronel Aispuro helped to import 450,000 kilograms of cocaine, 90,000 kilograms of heroin, 45,000 kilograms of methamphetamine and about 90,000 kilograms of marijuana. She was also charged with money laundering and engaging in transactions with a foreign narcotics trafficker.

Coronel Aispuro helped her husband escape from Mexico's most secure prison in 2015 by buying the land used to dig a mile-long underground tunnel that led to his freedom. Prosecutors said she also smuggled a GPS watch through prison security by disguising it as a food item. The drug kingpin used Coronel Aispuro to transmit messages between him and other cartel members while he was incarcerated, the prosecution said.

“He chose her to move those messages to people who worked for him,” Prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said during her trial.

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Light Sentence

Initially faced with a maximum sentence of ten years, Coronel Aispuro was handed a relatively light sentence due to her lack of a criminal record and the fact that she was not involved with the more violent activities of Guzman's cartel. As part of her plea deal, she also turned over $1.5 million in profits from Guzman's drug operation and was set to serve four years of supervised release.

Guzman was sentenced to life in prison in 2019, along with the forfeiture of $12.6 billion. In January of this year, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would consider a plea from the drug lord to serve out the rest of his sentence in a Mexican prison, instead of the Supermax prison in Colorado where he is behind bars.

A former beauty queen from an impoverished background, Coronel Aispuro married Guzman in 2007 on her 18th birthday. The couple have young twin daughters.

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA Today. You can reach her by email at [email protected] or on X at @CybeleMO.

Contributing: Associated Press