MS-13 gang leader faces sentencing for 8 murders including teen girls

An MS-13 gang chief from the suburbs of New York Metropolis is anticipated to be ordered on Wednesday in a federal racketeering case with eight murders, together with the 2016 Slayings of Two Lengthy Island Teenage Ladies.

Also referred to as “Blaasty” and “Plaky”, Alexi Saenz was responsible of his position final July in ordering and approving the murders, in addition to different crimes throughout an eruption of bloody violence that President Donald Trump made to go to Lengthy Island who promised to eradicate the legal group.

Below the murders, Saenz had been the dying of Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, lifelong buddies and classmates at Brentwood Excessive Faculty who had been brutally killed with a machete and a baseball bat. Different victims had been Javier Castillo, 15, from Central Islip, who was buddies who had been buddies by gang members to be hacked with a machete within the head, neck, torso and extremities in an remoted swamp. His stays had been buried and solely discovered a 12 months later.

One other sufferer, Oscar Acosta, 19, was discovered useless in a wooded space close to railway tracks virtually 5 months after he left his home in Brentwood to play soccer.

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Cuevas and Mickens had been honored throughout Trump’s State of the Union tackle 2018, the place the dad and mom of the victims are current.

MS-13 gang member Alexi Saenz shall be escorted New York on 2 March 2017 by FBI brokers in Central Islip. (James Carbone/NewDay by way of AP, File)

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Throughout his first time period, Trump introduced in 2020 that the Ministry of Justice would search for the dying penalty towards Saenz.

In accordance with the Biden administration, nevertheless, lawyer Basic Merrick Garland inquired in November 2023 Federal Public Prosecutors that the Doj had her intention to search for the dying penalty towards Saenz or his brother, Jairo Saenz.

The legal professionals of Saenz are on the lookout for a forty five -year sentence behind bars, however federal prosecutors need the decide to impose the utmost punishment of 70 years and claims that Saenz deserves to reside in jail for his “meaningless” and “sadistic” crimes.

“The eight victims who misplaced their lives did nothing to earn what the MS-13 did to them,” wrote public prosecutors in authorized archives previous to Wednesday’s listening to. “The suspect and the others killed them within the service of the gang with out regret or any rise up for them as individuals.”

However the legal professionals of Saenz have argued for Clementia and say in their very own authorized archives that the now 30-year-old is repentant and “on a visit of redemption” whereas he’s locked up.

Kayla Cuevas, 16, and her pal Nisa Mickens, 15, had been killed by MS-13 members in Brentwood, New York, in September 2016. (AP)

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“With the passage of time and far reflection, it’s tough for Mr. Saenz to reconcile the individual he was right this moment with the individual he was when he dedicated the crimes,” is their conviction memo. “He’s sorry deeply, and though he is aware of that the households could not settle for his apology, it’s honest and accepts full accountability for his participation in these crimes.”

The legal professionals of Saenz additionally say that he’s affected by mental disabilities and everlasting trauma of an offensive father and tough upbringing in El Salvador. They are saying that Saenz was recruited and unconsciously “cared for” in MS-13 as a result of he was a “simply influenced” and “gullible” highschool scholar on Lengthy Island.

Nevertheless, public prosecutors are going to have been “firmly anchored” in MS-13 within the final eight years, whereas he’s in a federal lock-up in Brooklyn in Brooklyn. They quoted photographs of him who posed with different gang members behind bars and displaying gang alerts and gang parapernalia. Additionally they say that Saenz has been disciplined for attacking different prisoners, refusing personnel assignments and possession of sharpened steel shafts, cell phones and different smuggling.

“Certainly, the identical sample of violence and chaos that has marked his life on the road has not decreased with the passage of time,” officers of justice wrote.

Robert Micens and Elizabeth Alvarado, and Evelyn Rodriguez and Freddy Cuevas, the dad and mom of Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, who had been killed by MS-13-Bendel members, are acknowledged by President Donald Trump throughout his State of the Union tackle on January 30, 2018. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Name)

The Doj says that Saenz was the chief of an MS-13 “Clique” who operated in Brentwood and Central Islip generally known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westide.

He admitted in July 2024 that he had licensed the eight murders and three different tried murders of noticed rivals and others who had not revered or argued with the clique.

Saenz additionally admitted arson, firearms and drug trafficking-from which the proceeds went to purchasing firearms, extra medicine and making contributions to the broader MS-13 gang.

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Trump has referred to MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha as a overseas terrorist group (FTO) in February, shortly after the beginning of his second time period.

The Related Press has contributed to this report.