Famous drug lord captured by Mexico right after he landed on a deported flight from US

One of the famous Arellano Felix brothers from Mexico was re-arrested on arrival in his homeland after being deported from the United States after serving most of 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors in Mexico say Eduardo Arellano Felix was handed over to Mexican federal authorities on Monday at a border crossing in Matamoros, opposite Brownsville, Texas. He faces several charges, including organized crime and drug trafficking in Mexico.

He was one of many drug lords who founded the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel, which moved hundreds of tons of cocaine and cannabis from Mexico and Colombia to the United States.

Known for his violent and brutal control of the drug trade in the border town of Tijuana in the 1990s, the arrests or deaths of most of the seven Arellano Felix brothers reduced the cartel.

The family has slowly lost its grip along the California border with Mexico in the last decade, while the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels emerged as the most powerful groups in the highly motivated drug corridor to move to the United States.

Arellano Felix was extradited from Mexico in August 2012 to face US charges. He was arrested in October 2008 in a shootout with Mexican authorities at his home in Tijuana.

Brother Benjamin Arellano Felix, described by the US and Mexican authorities as to the cartel's brain, was sentenced to 25 years in US prison after being extradited from Mexico, where he was arrested in 2002. Ramon Arellano Felix, the cartel's top investigator, was killed in a shootout with Mexican officers in 2002.

Another brother, Francisco Javier, was sentenced in 2007 to life in prison after the US Coast Guard caught him in a fishing boat in international waters off the Mexican coast of Baja California.

The issue of drug trafficking has always been a sensitive one for Mexico, especially after the release of some old-guard drug dealers.

Nearly eight years ago, drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero was released from a Mexican prison late at night when a judge unfairly ordered his release from a 40-year sentence for torture by US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in 1985. He has since returned back to drug trafficking and fired bloody turf battles in the northern Mexican border state of Sonora.

The current government of Mexico is beginning to earn a reputation for having released more drug lords than it has even arrested as part of the president's proclaimed policy of not arresting more drug lords to prevent rising violence.

It is a particularly prickly expense to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who in 2019 ordered the release of Ovidio Guzman, one of the "El Chapo" Guzman's sons, to prevent blood poisoning.