The famous drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén he has been returned to Mexico after serving a sentence in the United States and was quickly rearrested and sent to a maximum security prison to face Mexican charges.
There had been nervousness about the imminent return of Cárdenas Guillén, who once led the dreaded Gulf Cartel in northeastern Mexico before being arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007.
The US Department of Homeland Security confirmed on its social media accounts on Monday that Cárdenas Guillén had been returned after serving 14 years in US custody, most of his 25 years in prison in the US. He is a Mexican citizen, so he was presumably deported.
“The successful removal of Osiel Cárdenas, a notorious international fugitive, underscores our unwavering commitment to public safety and justice,” said Samuel Olson, director of the Chicago Field Office of Enforcement Operations and Removal, in one statement.
A Mexican federal official who was not authorized to be named said Cárdenas Guillén had been immediately arrested in Mexico on drug, organized crime and money laundering charges.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Handout via REUTERS
The official said Cárdenas Guillén was being held at the country’s maximum-security Altiplano prison, west of Mexico City.
National Security investigations published photos of a bald and bespectacled Cárdenas Guillén, escorted by two agents in helmets and antibacterial vests, and being crossed by a border bridge.
The image contrasts with the drug lord’s fearsome reputation for violence in Mexico.
Called “El Mata Amigos” (“The Killer Friend”), he recruited former Mexican special forces soldiers to form his personal guard. The former head of the Gulf cartel was known for his brutality. He created the bloodiest hitman gang Mexico has ever known, the Zetas, who routinely slaughtered migrants and innocent people.
The 57-year-old, a native of the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars through the Gulf Cartel, based in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.
After his arrest in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, he was extradited in 2007 to the United States, where he was sentenced in 2010 to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $50 million.
At that time, the Department of Justice supposed that Cárdenas Guillén threatened to kill a Texas sheriff’s deputy working as an undercover ICE agent because he refused to hand over nearly 1,000 kilograms of marijuana.