High-ranking MS-13 gang member Alexi Saenz entered a guilty plea to racketeering charges arising from eight murders on Wednesday in federal court in Central Islip, New York.
Prosecutors indicated that as part of a plea deal, he might spend 40–70 years in jail.
Two Long Island adolescents who died in September 2016—Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15—were among the deaths to which Saenz entered a guilty plea. The prosecution said that multiple gang members pursued them and used machetes and baseball bats to attack them.
For the 2017 teen deaths, Saenz and multiple other individuals suspected of being members of the MS-13 gang were taken into custody. Jairo Saenz, his brother, who was also detained at the time, is still facing charges.
“To say that Alexi Saenz’s hands are drenched in blood does not begin to describe the multiple killings and extreme mayhem he personally directed and committed in the span of one year in Suffolk County,” Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, stated on Wednesday. “While those murders and violent crimes were intended to further the sordid mission of the MS-13, the defendant has failed miserably.”
