Mexican drug kingpin Ocello Cárdenas Guillén, former leader of the notorious Gulf Cartel A member of the Los Zetas criminal gang was released from a U.S. prison on Friday and handed over to the Immigration Department, officials said.
Cardenas Guillen was captured in 2003 and extradited to the US four years later, where he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and extortion. Cardenas Guillen, 57, was released on Friday and transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a Federal Bureau of Prisons official told AFP.
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He has several cases pending against him in Mexico, but it is not yet known whether the US government will take steps to deport him. An unnamed US official told NBC News The Biden administration had planned to transfer Cárdenas Guillén to Mexico.
The Gulf Cartel was once one of Mexico’s most feared criminal groups, but has declined in influence in recent years and split into several factions.
As leader of the cartel, Cárdenas Guillén oversaw a drug trafficking empire responsible for exporting massive amounts of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States.
Nicknamed “El Mata Amigos” (“the Friend Killer”), he recruited former Mexican special forces soldiers to form his own personal guard, which eventually operated independently under the name Los Zetas, becoming one of the country’s bloodiest gangs until its collapse.
After his arrest in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, he was extradited to the United States in 2007, where he remains held. Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010 and was ordered to pay $50 million.
At that time, the Justice Department Alleged Cárdenas Guillén had threatened to kill a Texas sheriff’s deputy, who was working as an undercover ICE agent, after he refused to hand over nearly 1,000 kilograms of marijuana.
After his capture, the Zetas began operating more independently, eventually breaking away from the Gulf Cartel in 2010, and waging a war for control of drug trafficking routes in eastern and northeastern Mexico.
Gulf Cartel group behind the killing of Americans by 2023
In January, Mexican Marines taken into custody One of the top leaders of the Gulf Cartel, the gang that kidnapped four Americans killed two of them In March 2023. The kidnapping and murder of the Americans was linked to the Gulf Cartel faction known as “The Scorpions”.
Four Americans crossed into the border city of Matamoros from Texas in March so one of them could stay there. cosmetic surgeryThey were shot at in the center of the city of Matamoros and then loaded into a pickup truck.
The Americans Zindel Brown and Shadd Woodard Ten people died in the attack; Eric Williams and LaTavia McGee survived. A Mexican woman, Arely Pablo Servando, 33, was also killed, apparently by a stray bullet.
One April 2023 InterviewAt one point, Williams said, he lay on the floor of the pickup truck, hiding from the bodies of Woodard and Brown.
In May 2023, the police A top lieutenant arrested A member of the violent Metros faction of the Gulf drug cartel. The suspect was identified as Hugo Salinas Cortinas, whose nickname “La Cabra” means “the goat.”
Just a few weeks before that, the brother of former Gulf Cartel Plaza chief Miguel Villarreal, aka “Gringo Mike,” was shot dead. was sentenced Sentenced to 180 months in prison for role in distributing cocaine in Houston.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.