A senior MS-13 gang leader pleaded guilty Wednesday to eight brutal murders in New York, including the 2016 deaths of two high school girls who were beaten to death with a bat and hacked to death with a machete.
The slain girls, high school friends Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, were honored by former President Trump along with their parents during the 2018 State of the Union address, in which he called for stronger border enforcement.
Alexi Saenz, 29, pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in federal court in Central Islip on Long Island but remained largely silent — a stark contrast to his appearance in court in 2018, when he was reportedly smiling and joking with the other two suspects in front of the girls’ families.
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A senior MS-13 gang leader admitted to eight brutal murders in New York on Wednesday, including the 2016 deaths of two high school girls who were beaten to death with a bat and hacked to death with a machete. (Left: US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, top right: police handout, bottom right: Win McNamee of Getty)
Saenz also admitted to three other attempted murders, arson, firearms offenses and involvement in drug trafficking, the proceeds of which he used to buy firearms and drugs, as well as to donate to the MS-13 gang as a whole.
He faces between 40 and 70 years in prison if convicted, but prosecutors had previously withdrawn their intention to seek the death penalty in the case.
A series of gruesome murders in 2016 and 2017 shocked Long Island communities and highlighted how deeply rooted gang activity and lethal capacity had become in the region.
Outside court, Kayla’s father, Freddy Cuevas, said he was disappointed the death sentence had been dropped.
“He’s an animal. It’s inhumane,” Cuevas said of Saenz. “As far as the family is concerned, hopefully they’ll get justice soon and they can put this all behind them.”
On September 13, 2016, the day before Mickens’ 16th birthday, two teenage girls were brutally murdered in a residential neighborhood near their elementary school. Mickens’ body was discovered on a tree-lined street in Brentwood, while Cuevas’ bludgeoned body was found the following day in a wooded backyard of a nearby home.
The two teenagers were lifelong friends, and family and friends said they were inseparable and shared an interest in basketball.
MS-13 defendants laugh and smile as the murdered boy’s family looks on.
MS-13 gang member Alexi Saenz is escorted by FBI agents after being detained in Central Islip, New York. (James Carbone/Newsday via The Associated Press, File)
In the months before the murder, Cuevas had been embroiled in a series of feuds with members and associates of MS-13, a gang that formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s by Central American immigrants, mostly from El Salvador, but has since grown in power with devastating results.
Saenz, also known as “Blasti” and “Big Homie,” was the leader of an MS-13 group known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside, which operated in Brentwood and Central Islip. Charges are still pending against Saenz’s brother, Jairo Saenz, who prosecutors say was the No. 2 in the local gang.
Prosecutors said the conflict escalated when Cuevas and some friends got into an altercation with MS-13 members at Brentwood High School after the incident, after which the MS-13 members vowed to take revenge on Cuevas and got permission from Saenz to kill him.
Several MS-13 members then pursued and attacked Cuevas and Mickens, wielding baseball bats and machetes, striking the girls multiple times in the head and body while Alexi Saenz’s car drove around, keeping police on watch.
After the murder, the group fled to Saenz’s home in Central Islip, where they changed clothes and hid weapons.
Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said gang violence had been “destroyed” on Long Island.
“To say that Alexi Saenz has blood on his hands does not begin to describe the numerous murders and immense mayhem he personally orchestrated in Suffolk County over the course of a year,” Peace said.
Their horrific murders drew national attention, and the girls and their parents were honored by former President Trump in his 2018 State of the Union address.
“These two precious little girls were brutally murdered while walking together through their hometown,” Trump said, calling for tougher border controls. “Many of these gang members exploited glaring loopholes in our laws to enter our country as unaccompanied illegal alien minors and attend the same high school as Kayla and Nisa.”
The Republican Party He called for the death penalty. He has defended Saenz and others arrested in murder cases, blaming lax immigration policies for the rise in violence and gangs during several visits to Long Island.
In addition to Cuevas and Mickens, Saenz admitted to taking part in the murders of six other people, including 15-year-old Javier Castillo, who was helped by gang members and driven 30 miles to Freeport, where he was attacked with a machete and killed in a remote swamp. Castillo was believed to have been a member of the 18th Street gang, one of MS-13’s main rivals. His body was found buried a year later in 2017.
Another victim, Oscar Acosta, 19, also believed to be an 18th Street gang member, was found dead in a wooded area near the railroad tracks a few days after the deaths of Cuevas and Mickens. He had been missing nearly five months earlier after leaving his Brentwood home to play football.
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Kayla Cuevas, 16, and her friend, Nisa Mickens, 15, were murdered by MS-13 members in Brentwood, New York, in September 2016. (Associated Press)
The elderly victims include Esteban Alvarado Bonilla, 29, who was shot to death at a Central Islip deli in early 2017; Dewan Stacks, 34, who was ambushed and beaten to death while walking along a road near a Brentwood wooded area sometimes used as a gang meeting place; Marcus Bohannon, 27, who was shot in 2016; and Michael Johnson, who was bludgeoned and stabbed to death in Brentwood in 2016. Saenz’s team suspected all of the victims were members of rival gangs.
Cuevas’ mother, who became an anti-gang activist after her daughter’s death, tragically died in 2018 after being hit by a car during an argument over a memorial service two years after her daughter’s death. The driver, Annmarie Drago, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2024.
According to prosecutors, indictments have been filed against MS-13 members for more than 70 murders in the Eastern District of New York since 2010, resulting in the convictions of dozens of MS-13 leaders and members in connection to those killings.
Fox News correspondent Benjamin Brown and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
