MS-13 leader pleads guilty in case involving 8 killings, including deaths of Brentwood teens Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens

The leader of a powerful and violent Long Island MS-13 street gang on Wednesday acknowledged his role in the murders of two Brentwood teens and six others while pleading guilty to racketeering and weapons charges in federal court in Central Islip.

Alexi Saenz, 29, will be sentenced to 40 to 70 years in prison when he returns to U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown’s courtroom on Jan. 31, according to a plea deal his attorneys arranged with prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.

The 2016 killings of Brentwood teens Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, shocked Long Island and focused the nation’s attention on the Island’s gang violence. Cuevas' mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, became an anti-gang activist and was a guest of former President Donald Trump during the 2018 State of the Union address.

Rodriguez was fatally struck by a car during a dispute over a memorial marking the second anniversary of her daughter’s death. The driver, Ann Marie Drago, pleaded guilty earlier this year to negligent homicide.

Saenz, dressed in a tan prison uniform, did not express remorse — or any emotion — throughout the 90-minute hearing, while pleading guilty to racketeering in connection with the eight murders.

“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,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said.

In a statement read by his attorney, Natali Todd, Saenz said he joined MS-13 in 2014 and became leader of its Brentwood- and Central Islip-based Sailors clique in 2016, which prosecutors said was one of the most violent and powerful MS-13 cliques on the East Coast.

Federal prosecutors said Cuevas had been involved in an ongoing dispute with MS-13 members and associates and that Saenz gave authorization to kill Cuevas and Mickens after they saw the girls walking down Stahley Street in Brentwood on Sept. 13, 2016. The teens, students at Brentwood High School, were killed using baseball bats and a machete, prosecutors said.

The Justice Department said last year that it would not seek the death penalty for Saenz and his brother, Jairo Saenz, who has also been charged in connection with the eight killings.

Freddy Cuevas, Kayla’s father, said justice would only be served if Saenz and others involved in his daughter’s murder were executed.

“He’s an animal,” Cuevas said of Alexi Saenz. “He’s inhumane.”

Elizabeth Alvarado, Mickens’ mother, said she hopes the guilty plea brings peace to her slain daughter. She wore a T-shirt with “Nisa” superimposed over the NASA logo, and sported a tattoo of her daughter’s signature on her arm.

“They need to pay for what they did,” a sobbing Alvarado said of Saenz and other MS-13 members.

In court, Todd read from a long list of killings Saenz had been charged with and admitted on Wednesday.

Saenz admitted he directed MS-13 members to kill Michael Johnson, 29, in January 2016 and lured Johnson into a wooded area in Brentwood under the guise of smoking marijuana. MS-13 members ambushed Johnson from behind, striking him with a baseball bat, stabbing him with a knife and hacking him with a machete. MS-13 members lied when they said they believed Johnson was a member of the rival Bloods gang, the victim's father said after court.

“He had bipolar disorder,” George Johnson said of his son. “He was handicapped. So I did everything humanly possible not to get up and walk out of that courtroom, because that right there was a lie.”

Saenz also admitted he directed Sailors clique members to kill Oscar Acosta, 19, a former associate MS-13 believed had aligned himself with the rival 18th Street gang, according to prosecutors. MS-13 lured Acosta to a wooded area near an elementary school in Brentwood on April 29, 2016, telling him they would smoke marijuana.

Instead, they knocked him unconscious, bound him and placed him in Saenz’s car. The gang members took Acosta to a secluded area near Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital and took turns hacking him to death. Saenz, prosecutors said, supervised the killing.

Saenz and other MS-13 members were hunting for rival gang members when they spotted Marcus Bohannon, 27, walking along Lowell Avenue in Central Islip on Sept. 5, 2016, prosecutors said. Two MS-13 members hopped out of Saenz’s car and shot Bohannon nine times, according to officials.

Prosecutors said Saenz and other Sailors clique members drove Javier Castillo, 15, to Cow Meadow Park in Freeport on Oct. 10, 2016, to smoke marijuana, but instead attacked him, taking turns hacking him with a machete.

Three days later, Saenz and other clique members spotted Dewann Stacks, 34, in Brentwood. Believing Stacks to be a rival gang member, Saenz admitted he authorized his killing. Saenz drove around watching for police while other gang members attacked Saenz, beating and hacking him to death, prosecutors said.

On Jan. 30, 2017, Saenz and other MS-13 members spotted Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla — wearing a football jersey with the number “18” — in a Central Islip deli. The gang members concluded that Alvarado-Bonilla, 29, was a member of the rival 18th Street gang. An MS-13 member, carrying a gun provided by Saenz, entered the deli and fatally shot Alvarado-Bonilla, prosecutors said.

Saenz admitted he kept watch while other MS-13 members opened fire at suspected rivals on Aug. 10, 2016, in Brentwood. Nobody was hit. On Sept. 16, 2016, Saenz directed gang members to set fire to a car parked in the driveway of a house in a rival gang’s neighborhood. Saenz said he drove around while the arson took place, looking out for police.

The former gang leader also acknowledged that he had purchased wholesale quantities of cocaine and marijuana, which he distributed to Sailors clique members for street level sales in Brentwood. The profits were used in part to purchase firearms and additional drugs. Money was also funneled to leaders of the transnational gang in El Salvador.

Acting Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rob Waring called Saenz’s actions “senseless and barbaric.”

“The murders of teenagers Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens shook our communities and reverberated around the nation,” Waring said. “My hope is that this guilty plea will give the victims’ families some closure while also demonstrating our commitment to dismantling these criminal enterprises.” 

Brown on Wednesday expressed concerns about a part of the plea agreement that allows prosecutors or Saenz to void the deal if Jairo Saenz does not agree to plead guilty. Brown said he would accept the agreement but said he would wait until Jan. 31 to sentence Saenz in case his brother does not accept a deal.

“His brother is not prepared to plead guilty today,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Scotti told the judge.