Mexican drug lord Osiel Cardenas, founder of the ultra-violent Zetas, has been released from US prison

One of the most notorious drug lords in Mexican history, Osiel Cardenas, was released from a U.S. prison on Friday and is now in the hands of immigration officials who may deport him.

Cardenas, a former leader of the Gulf Cartel, was responsible for some of the bloodiest gang violence in Mexico’s turbulent past and is accused of transforming the drug trade by using extremely violent tactics such as beheadings.

Cardenas founded the Zetas, an armed wing of the Gulf Cartel made up of former army special forces.

He was captured in a shootout in 2003 and extradited to the United States in 2007. In 2010, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The Zetas later split and were for a time Mexico’s deadliest criminal organization, but then largely folded.

A U.S. Prison Service spokesman told Reuters that Cardenas was released earlier on Friday “into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

It is not yet clear whether Cardenas will be deported to Mexico or remain on U.S. soil.

An ICE spokesperson said enforcement and removal officers took Cardenas into custody at the jail in Terre Haute, Indiana, and that “he remains in ICE custody pending a final determination.”

NBC reports that the Biden administration plans to extradite Cardenas to Mexico on Monday, according to an anonymous US official.

Cardenas still faces charges in Mexico and is being held in a U.S. immigration detention center, a Mexican government source said.

Leo Silva, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who worked in Mexico to combat the Zetas, said Cardenas was directly responsible for the increase in horrific violence in Mexico over the past two decades.

The Zetas were the first to push organized criminal groups to move beyond drug trafficking to extorting civilians and businesses in the areas they controlled.

The Zetas also spread terror by carrying out large-scale kidnappings for ransom.