Osiel Cárdenas Guillén Deported from US and Arrested in Mexico

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

The patron founder of Los Zetas and former leader of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén has been returned to Mexico after serving his US sentence and was quickly re-arrested by Mexican authorities.

Cárdenas Guillén once led the feared Gulf Cartel before he was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007.

US Homeland Security Department confirmed in its social media accounts Monday that Cárdenas Guillén had been returned after serving 14 years in US custody, most of his 25-year US prison sentence.

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Osiel Cárdenas Guillén Incorrectly Reported as Being Released, the Former Gulf Cartel Leader is Still in US Prison

 "Socalj" for Borderland Beat

With Contributions from "Itzli" "Char" & "Enojon"

Recently, the news outlet Zeta Tijuana reported that the former leader of the Gulf Cartel and co-founder of the Los Zetas had already been released from USP Terra Haute Federal Prison in Indiana more than a month earlier than his scheduled release date of August 30, 2024.

However, Zeta Tijuana was accessing a Web 3 variation of the BOP Inmate Locator Registry, likely an outdated database on an internal or test server. That database showed his Release Date [future tense] as 07/01/2024. But his BOP Inmate Number 62604-079, still maintains his August release date on the official BOP website.

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Justice Hidden

Drug kingpin Cardenas’ sentencing hearing was wrongly kept from public view.

Houston Chronicle

Houston, TX - As bad guys go, Osiel Cardenas Guillen is one of the worst: Drug kingpin. Murderer. Enforcer. Money launderer. A modern-day Stalin, according to one retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

Over the years, Cardenas' control of the Gulf Cartel drug empire has harmed the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in this country and in Mexico — and in the most terrible and terrifying ways. From the hundreds who were executed for crossing him and his cartel to the untold thousands whose lives were ruined by addiction to the drugs he sold for profit, the evil wrought by Cardenas and his thugs has been appalling and pervasive.

Cardenas was sentenced to 25 years in a federal prison here Wednesday, but no member of the public was present to witness it. None of this proceeding, held in a federal courtroom, took place within public view. The sentencing hearing, conducted by U.S. District Judge Hilda Tagle, was not listed on the judge's public schedule till after it was completed. It was kept closed without any explanation until after the fact.

Even the terms of the drug kingpin's sentence remain unclear, since most of the prosecution was handled through closed hearings and sealed documents. It is not clear, for example, how much time Cardenas will actually serve.

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Insidious Rise of the Gulf Cartel

Interviews, files and court records trace a syndicate's growth from small-time pot smuggling to a mega-empire with a hub in Houston

Houston Chronicle

Juan Garcia Abrego, shown being escorted from the federal courthouse in 1996, was sentenced to 11 life terms, largely on the strength of testimony from a Mexican police commander who had been paid $1 million.

The Gulf of Mexico - Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Eye of the Tiger was on the radio. Cocaine cowboys roamed Miami.

And the seeds for what would become perhaps the largest and most powerful crime syndicate in the hemisphere were quietly being sowed in Houston.

It was 1982, and William Hoffman, an American drug runner later tucked into the witness-protection program, was busy using rental cars to ferry 25-pound loads of Mexican marijuana from Brownsville to Houston.

Hoffman, according to records, would drive to a house on Houston's Wallisville Road, where guys he knew only as “Guero” and “Gringo” would unload the pot.

But small-time was about to become big-time.

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