Former Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas set to be extradited from U.S. to Mexico

The Biden administration is planning to hand over Osiel Cardenas, a notorious drug cartel leader, to Mexico after releasing him from prison last week.

Cardenas, who led the Gulf Cartel and founded the Zetas, an armed organization that played a salient role in violent turf wars that marked Mexico, was imprisoned in the U.S. for 14 years.

He was released last week from a prison in Indiana and went on to be guarded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before his expected extradition, a government official told NBC News. He is now set to face pending charges in his home country.

Cardenas was captured in Mexico in 2003 and extradited to the U.S. four years later, where he was accused of "overseeing a vast drug-trafficking empire responsible for the import of thousands of kilos of cocaine and marijuana to the U.S. from Mexico."

He pleaded guilty to several grave charges pressed against him, including conspiracy to own and distribute controlled substances, as well as money laundering, and received a 25-year sentence in 2010.

While still free, Cardenas was among the most powerful drug lords in Mexico. He oversaw a large marijuana and cocaine trafficking ring rivaling enterprises such as the Sinaloa Cartel. Based in the border state of Tamaulipas, it mainly used its 370-kilometer long border with Texas to smuggle drugs into the U.S.

But according to specialized outlet InSight crime, his most significant legacy was the creation of the Zetas, an "armed force made of deserters from an elite unit of the Mexican army." This group, it added, "professionalized Mexico's gangland warfare by detonating an arms race and introducing a kind of brutal violence never before seen in the country." By 2012, a report from Reuters said, the Zetas were 10,000-strong and had a dominant position in the Mexican cartel world.

The outlet added that Cardenas doesn't seem to have remaining links to the Gulf Cartel, which has split into smaller groups since he was imprisoned. The Zetas also separated about ten years ago.