Alexi Saenz led the Brentwood and Central Islip chapter of the Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside, a clique of the MS-13 gang, on the south shore of Suffolk County, Long Island. Between January 2016 and January 2017 eight people died in killings that he admitted ordering or approving. Among them were two friends, Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, who died on the same day in Brentwood in September 2016, and Javier Castillo, 15, of Central Islip. The other five were men aged 19 to 34.
On July 10, 2024, Saenz pleaded guilty in federal court in Central Islip to racketeering charges tied to the eight murders, three attempted murders, arson, narcotics trafficking and related federal offenses. On July 2, 2025, United States District Judge Gary R. Brown sentenced him to 68 years' imprisonment. Prosecutors had sought 70 years, the maximum under the plea agreement, and his lawyers had asked for 45. The federal government had once announced that it would seek the death penalty against him; that intent was later withdrawn.
Saenz was 22 when he was first charged in March 2017, which puts his birth in about 1994 or 1995. Federal records list him as a resident of El Divisadero, in the department of Morazan in El Salvador, and of Central Islip, New York. His lawyers told the court at sentencing that he had grown up with trauma in El Salvador, that he has intellectual disabilities, and that he was recruited into MS-13 as a teenager without understanding what he was joining.
By 2016 he led the local chapter of the Sailors clique. The clique operated in Brentwood and Central Islip. Saenz admitted that he ordered or approved the killing of rival gang members and of people who had disrespected or feuded with the clique. He also admitted running a narcotics conspiracy from April 2016 to March 2017, in which he obtained wholesale cocaine and marijuana for street-level sales. The proceeds paid for further drug purchases and for money transfers to MS-13 leaders in El Salvador.
Michael Johnson, 29, died in Brentwood on January 28, 2016. He was the first of the eight. His father attended the 2025 sentencing in a shirt carrying his son's image and told the court that Saenz should look at him.
Oscar Acosta, 19, died in Brentwood on April 29, 2016.
Marcus Bohannon, 27, died in Central Islip on September 5, 2016. Other MS-13 members carried out the killing, and it is counted among the eight because Saenz admitted his part in it as clique leader.
Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, were lifelong friends who lived in Brentwood. They died on September 13, 2016. Nisa was a day short of her sixteenth birthday. At the sentencing in 2025 Nisa's mother asked Saenz why he had taken her daughter.
Javier Castillo, 15, lived in Central Islip and died in Freeport, in Nassau County, on October 10, 2016. At the 2025 sentencing Javier's father said that the family had come from El Salvador seeking a better future, that they had waited eight years for the case to end, and that he could not be happy but was satisfied with the sentence.
Dewann Stacks, 34, died in Brentwood on October 13, 2016.
Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, 29, died in Central Islip on January 30, 2017. A survivor was wounded in the same event.
Alongside the murders Saenz was charged with three attempted murders of men said to be rival gang members. Two of these occurred in Brentwood, on July 18 and August 10, 2016. A car in Brentwood was also set on fire on September 12, 2016, and the arson count in the case arises from that event.
On March 2, 2017, prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York unsealed a 41-count second superseding indictment against 13 members of the clique. Four of them were arrested that morning and arraigned in Central Islip before Judge Joseph F. Bianco. Saenz, then 22, was charged with the killings of Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens along with three co-defendants. The charges covered racketeering, seven murders, attempted murders, assault, obstruction of justice, arson, conspiracy to distribute marijuana and related counts. Two juveniles were charged under seal in the girls' deaths. U.S. Attorney Robert L. Capers said at the time that the killings showed the depravity of a gang whose primary mission was murder.
Later superseding indictments widened the case. One of them, in the form that named Saenz in racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, murder and conspiracy-to-murder counts, charged the killings of Michael Johnson, Oscar Acosta, Kayla Cuevas, Nisa Mickens, Javier Castillo, Dewann Stacks and Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, counts of attempted murder and assault, arson and arson conspiracy, accessory after the fact, related counts and a narcotics conspiracy running from April 2016 to October 2017.
In July 2020 the Attorney General filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty against Saenz for the seven murders then charged. That decision was announced on July 15, 2020, the day after a separate indictment against other MS-13 members was unsealed. On November 10, 2023, the Justice Department announced that it would not seek the death penalty against Saenz and a co-defendant, and prosecutors later withdrew the notice. At the time of the announcement the trial had been set for March 2024. The father of Kayla Cuevas said after the plea that he was disappointed that the death penalty had been taken off the table.
Pretrial litigation continued for years. In November 2022 Judge Brown ruled that the government had partly met its discovery obligations in the case against Saenz and his co-defendants.
Several members of the clique pleaded guilty before Saenz did. Jonathan Hernandez, who pleaded guilty in May 2022 to racketeering charges tied to two murders, those of Michael Johnson and Oscar Acosta, an attempted murder and a drug conspiracy, was sentenced on January 31, 2024 to 520 months' imprisonment. Enrique Portillo pleaded guilty before Judge Brown on August 31, 2023 to racketeering and related charges tied to four murders, including those of Kayla Cuevas, Nisa Mickens, Dewann Stacks and Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla; he faced up to a life sentence on the racketeering charge. A co-defendant pleaded guilty in January 2025 to racketeering charges tied to seven of the murders. Saenz's plea agreement contained a provision under which it depended on that co-defendant also pleading guilty.
On Wednesday, July 10, 2024, Saenz appeared in the federal courthouse in Central Islip and pleaded guilty to racketeering charges tied to eight murders, three attempted murders, arson, narcotics trafficking and related federal offenses. He said in court that he had ordered or approved the killings of rivals and of others who had disrespected the clique or feuded with it. The plea agreement set a sentencing range of 40 to 70 years, with restitution to the victims and their families. Sentencing was first set for January 31.
Judge Brown imposed the sentence on July 2, 2025. Prosecutor Paul Scotti asked for the 70-year maximum and called Saenz's apology to the families self-serving. Prosecutors said that Saenz had stayed committed to MS-13 while in custody. His lawyer, Natali Todd, asked for 45 years and said that he was sorry. Saenz spoke in Spanish through an interpreter, asked forgiveness from God, his family and the victims' families, and said that he was no longer the person he had been. None of the families accepted the apology.
The judge took two years off the request of the prosecution, giving weight to the guilty plea, which spared the families a trial, and to Saenz's efforts to persuade a co-defendant to plead guilty as well. The sentence was 68 years' imprisonment. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. said that Saenz had led an "unspeakable reign of terror, killing, and crime that damaged his community." The mother of Nisa Mickens said she was satisfied: "That's life for him because he's never going to come out." The father of Kayla Cuevas said that the evidence that Saenz had run the gang from custody made the outcome better for the families.
At his sentencing on July 2, 2025, he was ordered to serve the 68 years in federal custody. No appeal has been reported.
The charging papers in this case invoked the racketeering statute at 18 U.S.C. section 1962, and a defendant who pleads guilty to a racketeering count admits that he took part in the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering acts, which in this case included the murders. Murder in aid of racketeering was also charged.
Federal capital cases require authorization from the Attorney General, who filed the notice in this case in July 2020; a later Justice Department decision, announced in November 2023, took the death penalty out of the case.
Saenz's lawyers argued that he has intellectual disabilities and lasting trauma from his childhood and that he was recruited and groomed into MS-13 without fully understanding what he was doing. Prosecutors answered that he had remained entrenched in the gang. The judge imposed a sentence two years below the request of the prosecution.
Saenz admitted that he ordered or approved the killings; the cases against other members of the clique deal separately with who carried out each one.
2016, January 28: Michael Johnson, 29, dies in Brentwood.
2016, April 29: Oscar Acosta, 19, dies in Brentwood.
2016, April to 2017, March: narcotics conspiracy admitted by Saenz.
2016, July 18 and August 10: attempted murders in Brentwood.
2016, September 5: Marcus Bohannon, 27, dies in Central Islip.
2016, September 12: arson in Brentwood.
2016, September 13: Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, die in Brentwood.
2016, October 10: Javier Castillo, 15, dies in Freeport.
2016, October 13: Dewann Stacks, 34, dies in Brentwood.
2017, January 30: Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, 29, dies in Central Islip.
2017, March 2: second superseding indictment unsealed against 13 members of the clique; Saenz, 22, charged.
2020, July: notice of intent to seek the death penalty filed against Saenz.
2022, November 9: Judge Brown rules on discovery in the case.
2023, August 31: Enrique Portillo pleads guilty.
2023, November 10: Justice Department announces it will not seek the death penalty against Saenz.
2024, July 10: Saenz pleads guilty to racketeering charges tied to eight murders.
2025, January 14: a co-defendant pleads guilty to racketeering charges tied to seven murders.
2025, July 2: Saenz sentenced to 68 years.