Felipe Dominguez-Vargas, a purported "cell leader" of the infamous Juarez drug cartel, made his initial appearance in federal court in El Paso on Monday, where he waived his detention hearing and was ordered to remain in custody pending trial.

The violent Juarez cartel, which controls major smuggling routes into the United States for billions of dollars worth of illegal drug shipments annually and is known to have beheaded its rivals and mutilated their corpses, has suffered significant setbacks over the past several months at the hands of Mexican and U.S. law enforcement authorities.