President Trump revealed Wednesday that Attorney General Bill Barr was seeking the federal death penalty for MS-13 gang member Alexi Saenz, who faces multiple murder changes, including the murders of two New York teens in 2016.
“The Justice Department has also announced that it will seek the death penalty for an MS-13 bloodthirsty leader responsible for the despicable murder of seven Americans, including two teens,” Trump said in the Oval Office, surrounded by Barr and other laws. law enforcement officials. “We believe that monsters that kill children should be executed.”
Sáenz was originally arrested in March 2017 and charged with murder for the September 13, 2016 murders of Bisawood, New York high school students, Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas.
President Trump revealed Wednesday that Attorney General Bill Barr was seeking the federal death penalty for MS-13 gang member Alexi Saenz, accused of killing seven people.
Attorney General Bill Barr guided the president, law enforcement officials and reporters through what the ‘Vulcan Joint Task Force’, the group it formed to eradicate the MS-13 gang, has been doing.
The day before her 16th birthday, the brutally beaten body of Nisa Mickens (left) was found on a tree-lined street in Brentwood, Long Island, New York. The beaten body of 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas (right) was discovered in the wooded courtyard of a nearby house.
Alexi Saenz (right) appears in the photo being arrested in March 2017. Since his initial arrest, he has been implicated in the murder of seven people.
The indictment says the girls had been attacked with baseball bats and a machete a week after they had an altercation with members of the MS-13 gang.
In June 2018, Saenz was charged with additional crimes, according to a statement from the Justice Department.
They revolved around his involvement in the murders of Oscar Acosta, who was beaten with tree limbs and tied up by other gang members. Saenz, the leader of the Brentwood chapter of the so-called “sailor clique,” was then called in, and Acosta was loaded into the trunk of a car and driven to a wooded area where he was stabbed and killed with a machete. His body was not recovered for four months.
Sáenz was also involved in the October 2016 murder of Javier Castillo, who MS-13 members believed were associated with a rival gang. He was also attacked and killed by machete. His body was not recovered for a year.
Three days later, Saenz and several MS-13 members again attacked and killed Dewann Stacks, who they also suspected to be in a rival gang. He was killed with a baseball bat and machetes.
Sáenz was charged with a sixth murder in July 2019: the murder of Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, who, once again, was suspected of being a member of a rival gang.
In November 2019, Saenz was charged with a seventh murder, that of Michael Johnson, 29. Newsday reported that Johnson could have used a color associated with a rival gang.
The death penalty announcement was part of a briefing Barr was giving Trump on what the ‘Joint Vulcan Task Force’, a group created by Barr to eradicate MS-13, had accomplished.
Barr described how MS-13 is unique, explaining that the gang was not fueled by commercial interests like the mob.
“It’s about the honor of being the wildest and most bloody person you can be and building the reputation of a murderer,” Barr said. “This is somehow a cult of death.”
However, he added, MS-13 is involved in human and narcotics trafficking to finance the operation.
But the basic purpose, Barr said, is “violence and terror of people.”
He then recognized three recent moves made by the feds to confront MS-13.
First, it was to charge terrorism charges against the leader of the MS-13 Armando Eliu Melgar Díaz, who is known by the nickname of ‘blue’, in a case based in Virginia.
“We are using terrorism, which gives us additional strength,” Trump explained.
They also shot down the “Hollywood clique,” as it is called, operating in Nevada, California and the Eastern District of New York, which is Long Island.
Barr then mentioned how the government was now seeking the death penalty for Sáenz.
In New York, a state without the death penalty, capital punishment is rarely applied.
In 2018, federal prosecutors in New York sought the death penalty for terrorism suspect Sayfullo Saipov, who killed eight people.
Prior to that, prosecutors had tried to obtain the death penalty for Khalid Barnes in September 2009. Barnes was convicted of murdering two drug providers, but was ultimately sentenced to life in prison.
The last time a death sentence was carried out in the state dates back to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953, who were executed after being convicted of spying on the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War.
But Trump said there was a “good deal” about using the death penalty to punish Saenz.
“These people murder children and they do it as slowly and cruelly as possible,” Trump said.
“We will not allow these animals to terrorize our communities and my administration will not rest until every MS-13 member is brought to justice,” added Trump, again using the controversial term “animals” to describe gang members. , something he previously received criticism from Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in 2018.
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