Jairo Saenz, MS-13 clique leader, sentenced for 7 murders, including Brentwood girls Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens in 2016

An MS-13 leader who acknowledged his role in seven murders — including the shocking killings of two Brentwood High School students whose deaths turned national attention on Long Island gang violence — was sentenced to 60 years in prison on Tuesday in Central Islip.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Scotti told U.S District Judge Gary R. Brown that Jairo Saenz, 30, the No. 2 leader in MS-13’s Sailors clique behind his brother, Alexi Saenz, was at the center of a "historic wave of violence and murder" on Long Island. Most of the victims were beaten and hacked to death with baseball bats and machetes, the prosecutor said.

"They didn’t just want to kill," Scotti said. "They wanted their victims to suffer during their last moments of life."

Saenz pleaded guilty in January 2025 to racketeering for his role in the Sept. 13, 2016, murders of Brentwood teens Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, and five other killings, and for his participation in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana. He also pleaded guilty to use of a firearm which was brandished and discharged during a crime of violence.

Scotti said the Central Islip- and Brentwood-based Sailors were the most violent clique of the most violent gang in the nation between January 2016 and January 2017, when the murders linked to Saenz were committed.

"These were heinous, brutal and reprehensible acts," Brown told Saenz before handing down his sentence. "This is the stuff of nightmares."

Scotti said Saenz, also known as "Funny," was also involved in three attempted murders, the firebombing of cars belonging to members of a rival gang, and other crimes, according to authorities. Alexi Saenz was sentenced in July 2025 to 68 years in prison and was responsible for eight murders, according to prosecutors.

"Jairo Saenz and his brother Alexi were at the forefront of a violent reign of terror and bloodshed that plagued communities across Long Island for years," said Joseph Nocella, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. "They will both spend decades in prison, effectively life sentences, for their unspeakable crimes."

Through the almost 90-minute sentencing hearing, Jairo Saenz kept his head down, looking up only periodically as relatives of the murder victims read impact statements.

"You can look down any time you want, because that is where you are going — down," said Freddy Cuevas, Kayla Cuevas’ father. "I hope all your days, months and years you are incarcerated, that you don’t live in peace. I hope you don’t see your family again."

The first person killed during the Sailors’ reign of terror was Michael Johnson, who Saenz and other MS-13 members mistakenly believed was a member of the rival Bloods street gang.

"So you don’t want to look at me?" Johnson’s father, George Johnson, said as Saenz stared at the floor. The grieving father said Michael Johnson’s death ripped a hole in his family and he demanded to know why the gang had targeted his son.

Saenz, who fled El Salvador to escape gang violence, could have taken advantage of the opportunities available in the United States, but instead chose "to do wrong," Johnson said.

"You need to suffer, young man," he told Saenz.

Monica Foster, one of Saenz's attorneys, said the defendant hung his head not out of disrespect or cowardice, but out of shame.

"God knows I am sorry," Foster said, reading a statement from Saenz. "I want you to know that, too."

Jackie Walsh, another lawyer with Saenz's defense team, asked Brown to sentence the defendant to 40 years in prison. Saenz had been abandoned by his mother at an early age and was subjected to abject poverty, as well physical and mental abuse as a child. His childhood home in rural El Salvador was near a mining operation that poisoned the water supply with toxins, she said, which impacted his cognitive abilities.

Saenz was a teen when he joined MS-13, Walsh added, and his brain was not developed adequately to understand the consequences of membership in the deadly gang. She said those were not excuses for Saenz's behavior. They were explanations, she said, and grounds for lenience.

Elizabeth Alvarado, Nisa Mickens' mother, was not sympathetic. She said she wished Brown would have imposed a harsher sentence but took solace in the fact that Saenz will likely die in prison.

When asked what Mickens — who would have turned 26 years old on Monday — would be doing if she was still alive, Alvarado said "everything," especially doting on her niece and nephews.

"Him putting his head down, he was just a coward," she said. "But, one day, he has to answer to this."

Cuevas’ mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, became an anti-gang activist after her daughter’s death. She was a guest of President Donald Trump during his 2018 State of the Union and also met with Trump later that year, when he visited Brentwood to discuss gang violence with Long Island leaders.

Rodriguez was killed in September 2018 — two years to the day her daughter’s remains were discovered — during a confrontation with a motorist.