Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, one of Mexico’s most dreaded drug lords, has been released from a US jail after completing the majority of a 25-year term, authorities announced Friday. According to a US Bureau of Prisons spokesman, Cárdenas Guillén has been released from jail and is now in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would generally indicate that he would be deported back to Mexico.
According to an unnamed Mexican official, Cárdenas Guillén is wanted on two arrest orders in Mexico. Thus, he will most certainly be detained upon arrival. The former chief of the Gulf cartel was notorious for his violence. He founded the Zetas, Mexico’s most ruthless gang of hitmen, who systematically massacred migrants and innocent bystanders.
In 2010, Cárdenas Guillén received a 25-year prison sentence and was compelled to surrender tens of millions of dollars. It is unclear why he did not complete his term, but he was extradited to the United States in January 2007. The 57-year-old Matamoros native made millions of dollars by moving tons of cocaine through the Gulf cartel, which is centered in the border communities of Reynosa and Matamoros.
He formed the Zetas, a group of former Mexican special forces troops who he recruited to serve as his private army and assassination squad. They perpetrated acts of terror that frequently included slaying dozens of people, decapitating them, and dumping heaps of hacked-up carcasses on highways. The Zetas remained active long after Cárdenas Guillén was apprehended in 2003. By 2010, the Zetas had established their cartel, carrying out terror-style operations throughout Mexico, as far south as Tabasco, until their senior leaders were killed or imprisoned in 2012-2013.
The Northeast cartel, a Zetas spinoff, still controls the border city of Nuevo Laredo, which is located across from Laredo in Texas. But Cárdenas Guillén’s gang, the Gulf cartel, has become hopelessly fragmented after more than a decade of brutal infighting among factions known as The Metros, The Cyclones, The Reds, and The Scorpions.
Cárdenas Guillén’s nickname was “El Mata Amigos,” meaning “The One Who Kills His Friends.” Cárdenas Guillén’s most daring act occurred in 1999, when he surrounded and halted a vehicle carrying two Drug Enforcement Administration officers and one of their informants in Matamoros, Texas, across the border from Brownsville.
His gunmen pointed their weapons at the agents and demanded that they turn over the informant, who would almost definitely be tortured and killed. The agents toughed it out and refused, reminding him that killing DEA workers was a horrible option. Cárdenas Guillén eventually called off his gunmen, but not before reportedly declaring, “You gringos, this is my territory.”
