CENTRAL ISLIP, NY — A high-ranking member of an MS-13 cabal in New York pleaded guilty Tuesday to racketeering and other federal charges in a case involving seven murders, including the slaying of two high school girls which focused the country’s attention on the violent Central American street gang.
Jairo Saenz, 28, entered the plea in federal court in Central Islip during a hearing attended by members of his family and some of the victims’ families.
“I did these things and I knew they were wrong,” he said in Spanish through a translator after his lawyer read his account of the killings in the Long Island suburb just east of New York City.
Saenz, who is originally from El Salvador, will be sentenced June 13 and faces 40 to 60 years in prison as part of the plea deal approved by the judge.
Prosecutors have said he was the second-in-command in a gang clique operating in Brentwood and Central Islip known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside. His brother Alexi Saenz, the leader of the clique, has previously pleaded guilty similar charges and will be sentenced later this month.
The brothers have admitted that they ordered or approved the murders of rivals and others who disrespected or quarreled with the cabal in order to move up the MS-13 hierarchy and enhance their group’s reputation.
Saenz’s family and lawyers made no comment outside court, but the parents of two of the victims said they wished he had received a life sentence.
“It was a piece of justice, but not what I wanted,” said George Johnson, the father of 29-year-old Michael Johnson, who was beaten and stabbed to death in Brentwood in 2016. “At least he’s not out on the street trying to hurt someone else.”
Elizabeth Alvarado lamented that her daughter, Nisa Mickens, was just a day shy of her 16th birthday when she suffered a similar fate in September 2016.
“That really hurt because she had so many dreams,” her mother said outside the courthouse. “She wanted to become a veterinarian. She wanted to be a nurse, just like me and her father. There are just so many things I miss.”
Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, 16, were lifelong friends and classmates at Brentwood High School when they were murdered with a machete and baseball bat by a group of young men and teenage boys who had stalked them in a car.
Acting U.S. Attorney Carolyn Pokorny said in a statement that Saenz participated in “barbaric and multiple acts of senseless gang violence that turned parts of Long Island into a war zone,” with MS-13 gang members “wielding guns, machetes, bats and weapons.” fire” in their reign of terror.
“I sincerely hope that today’s guilty plea brings some measure of comfort and closure to the families of the defendant’s victims as they continue to mourn the deaths of their loved ones,” she added.
President Donald Trump, then in his first term, called for the death penalty as Saenz and others were arrested in the murders and blamed the violence and gang growth on lax immigration policies while he made several visits to Long Island.
Other victims in the case included Javier Castillo, a 15-year-old who prosecutors say gang members befriended before taking him to a remote park and attacking him with machetes.
Another victim, Oscar Acosta, 19, was found dead in a wooded area near a railway line five months after leaving home to play football.
Older victims included Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, 29, who was killed by a gunman at a Central Islip deli in early 2017, and Dewann Stacks, 34, who was ambushed and beaten to death as he walked along a road in Brentwood.
Saenz also pleaded guilty Tuesday to his participation in three murder attempts; arson; trafficking in narcotics; firearms offences; and a conspiracy to kill Marcus Bohannon, who was killed by other MS-13 members in 2016.