This April 10, 1989 file photo shows Mexican drug trafficker Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo at an undisclosed location. / AP

A veteran Mexican drug lord convicted of the murder of a U.S. undercover agent has been granted house arrest due to his deteriorating health, authorities said Tuesday. Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo was considered Mexico's most powerful drug trafficker when he was arrested for the murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in 1985.

Known as the "Boss of Bosses" ("Jefe de jefes"), the 76-year-old founder of the Guadalajara cartel has been in prison since 1989 and is blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.

"He needs treatment that cannot be given in prison because he has many diseases," Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters.

"He takes a lot of medicine. He's in a delicate situation," Lopez Obrador added.

In 2021, Lopez Obrador publicly thanked Felix Gallardo for his "good wishes," after the aging drug kingpin said in an interview that the leftist leader was slowly resolving the violence gripping Mexico.

Felix Gallardo has served 33 years of a 40-year prison sentence.

His worsening condition prompted the National Human Rights Commission to intercede in his case.

A judge granted Felix Gallardo house arrest with a tracking device on the grounds that he is in danger of dying before completing his sentence, an official in the western state of Jalisco, Jose Antonio Perez, told AFP.

The attorney general's office has challenged the decision, he said.

Felix Gallardo's organization is considered the forefather of modern Mexican drug cartels.

It was one of the first cartels to establish contacts with Colombian drug lords, working to transport cocaine up from the South American country to the United States.

Last month, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration told CBS News that two Mexican cartels -- the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel -- are behind the influx of fentanyl in the U.S. that's killing tens of thousands of Americans.

"Those cartels are acting with calculated, deliberate treachery to get fentanyl to the United States and to get people to buy it through fake pills, by hiding it in other drugs, any means that they can take in order to drive addiction and to make money," DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said.

The Department of Justice considers the Jalisco cartel to be "one of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world." The cartel's leader, Nemesio Oseguera, "El Mencho," is among the most sought by Mexican and U.S. authorities.

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