A high-ranking member of MS-13 on Long Island pleaded guilty Tuesday to seven murders, including the brutal killings of two high school girls that drew national attention.
Jairo Saenz, 28, faces 40 to 60 years in prison when he’s sentenced on June 13. His older brother, Alexi, pleaded guilty in the same cases in July 2024.
The Saenz brothers were the leaders of a Long Island-based MS-13 chapter known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside, according to federal investigators. From January 2016 through January 2017, they ordered a series of crimes in normally quiet neighborhoods on Long Island.
“Jairo Saenz pleaded guilty to seven murders that can only be described as barbaric, and multiple acts of senseless gang violence that had turned parts of Long Island into a war zone,” Acting U.S. Attorney Carolyn Pokorny said in a statement.
The highest-profile killings were the murders of Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, in Brentwood on Sept. 13, 2016. Cuevas had multiple disagreements with MS-13 members at Brentwood High School, and the gang marked her for death.
On the fatal night, she was walking with Mickens when a group of MS-13 members spotted them and called the Saenz brothers for approval to kill both girls, which the Saenzes granted. Cuevas and Mickens were beaten with baseball bats and hacked to death with machetes.
Jairo Saenz also pleaded guilty to the murders of Michael Johnson, Oscar Acosta, Javier Castillo, Dewann Stacks and Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla. Several of the victims were lured to secluded locations before being beaten and hacked to death by MS-13 members.
“I did these things, and I knew they were wrong,” Saenz said through a translator at Tuesday’s hearing in Central Islip Federal Court.
Saenz was captured in March 2017. In 2020, with then-President Donald Trump in office, federal prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty against both Saenz brothers. However, that plan was dropped after President Biden took office and began leading the Justice Department.
Saenz’s guilty plea came less than a week before Trump — whose Justice Department carried out 13 executions — is scheduled to retake office.