MS-13 leader pleads guilty in case involving 8 murders, including deaths of 2 girls on Long Island
CENTRAL ISLIP, NY — A leader of a New York City MS-13 gang pleaded guilty Wednesday to racketeering and weapons possession in a case involving eight murders, including the 2016 killings of two high school girls who were stabbed and beaten to death as they strolled through their leafy Long Island suburb.
Alexi Saenz filed a motion Wednesday in federal court in Central Islip after prosecutors previously withdrew a bid to seek the death penalty in his case.
The deaths he is said to have ordered include the murders of Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens15, lifelong friends and classmates at Brentwood High School who were murdered with a machete and a baseball bat.
The deaths of the high school students focused the nation’s attention on MS-13 gang violence during President Donald Trump’s administration.
The Republican called for the death penalty for Saenz and others arrested in the killings and blamed the violence and growth of gangs on lax immigration policies when he made several visits to Long Island. Cuevas’ mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, was a guest at Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address.
The girls’ deaths raised questions about whether police had been aggressive enough in combating the already serious threat of gangs forming at area high schools.
For months in 2016, Spanish-speaking children and young men had disappeared in Brentwooda working-class community 40 miles (64.37 kilometers) east of New York City. After Cuevas and Mickens were killed, police discovered the bodies of three other youths in Brentwood, ages 15, 18 and 19, who had disappeared months earlier.
Police and federal agents arrested dozens of suspected members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, an international criminal organization believed to have formed as a street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s while fleeing civil war in El Salvador.
Cuevas’ mother, Rodriguez, became an anti-gang activist after her daughter’s death, but was herself murdered in 2018. Rodriguez was fatally struck by a car during a dispute over a memorial marking the second anniversary of her daughter’s death. The driver, Annmarie Drago, pleaded guilty in 2024 to manslaughter.
Saenz’s lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
Prosecutors said Saenz, also known as “Blasty” and “Big Homie,” was the leader of an MS-13 clique operating in Brentwood and Central Islip known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside. Charges are pending against his brother, Jairo Saenz, who prosecutors say was the number two man in the local gang.
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