The father of a 15-year-old New York girl who was killed in a brutal MS-13 attack in 2016 is speaking out against the sweetheart plea deal given to the gang leader who organized her murder and six others that federal prosecutors secured just days before President Biden leaves office.
“He or anyone involved with the killing of a person should not be given a plea deal,” Mickens father, Robert Mickens, told Fox News Friday. “That’s another big mistake that our current President Biden has made, but I’m not shocked. It’s a slap in the face for my family and others’ families, who have to live with the grief for the rest of our lives knowing that this demonic person is given a plea deal.”
One of his daughter’s suspected killers, 28-year-old Jairo Saenz, received a last-minute deal that spares him from both the death penalty and life imprisonment under the orders of Biden’s outgoing Attorney General, Merrick Garland.
Days later, additional members of the gang received similar deals in another racketeering case that involved nine murder victims.
LAME DUCK BIDEN’S DOJ GIVES BRUTAL GANG LEADER SWEETHEART PLEA DEAL IN MURDER SPREE THAT KILLED 7
Saenz is expected to receive 40 to 60 years behind bars. His brother, Alexi, has separately pleaded guilty to eight murders in exchange or a 70-year prison sentence. And federal prosecutors in New York on Friday announced similar plea deals for three more Long Island MS-13 leaders in connection with nine murders – none of which include llfe in prison or capital punishment.
Saenz’s chapter of MS-13, known as the “Sailors,” was notoriously violent.
The other killers include Kevin Torres, who like the Saenz brothers was a leader in the Sailors subset, as well as David Sosa-Guevara and Victor Lopez-Morales, who were both involved in a chapter prosecutors called “Hollywood.”
The Saenz brothers would have faced the death penalty under Trump’s Justice Department during his first term.
The death penalty had never been authorized in the other three cases, however, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York said Friday.
Illegal immigration and rampant MS-13 violence helped shift suburban Long Island toward Republicans in recent elections, according to some experts and people who live there.
Nisa was a student at Brentwood High School, in Suffolk County, about 45 miles east of New York City. MS-13 gang members, under the direction of co-leader Jairo Saenz, ambushed her and her best friend, 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas, with machetes and a baseball bat as they were walking through a neighborhood. The gang brutally killed them and left their bodies to be found.
The Sailors would regularly drive around looking for rivals to kill, then lure or ambush them, according to federal prosecutors.
The slaughter got so bad on Long Island that during President Trump’s first term, he visited in person to meet with the families of Cuevas, Mickens and other victims and enlisted then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in an effort to take the gang off the streets, which he said was using immigration “loopholes” to bring members into the U.S.
The federal crackdown at the time led to thousands of deportations of its members. Saenz and his group were held to face justice, and former Attorney General Bill Barr’s office would later announce it was seeking the death penalty. Trump invited Mickens and Ceuvas’ parents to attend a State of the Union address.
In 2023, then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace told the judge that Garland had directed him to stop pursuing the death penalty. Peace stepped down Friday and has been succeeded by acting U.S. Attorney Carolyn Pokorny, who is expected to hold the post until Trump-nominated Joseph Nocella Jr. is confirmed.
Trump has vowed to not only end Biden’s moratorium on capital punishment, but also to expand the list of crimes that can be punishable with execution to include child rape, human trafficking and the murder of U.S. citizens by illegal immigrants. Thirteen federal inmates were executed during Trump’s first term, the most under any president in decades, but Biden halted executions after taking office in 2021.
“I’m pretty sure our President Trump will look into this and make the right decision,” Mickens said Friday. “Democrats didn’t care when my daughter passed away. They didn’t show any respect in 2018 at the State of the Union, by not standing up when we were being honored, and now they don’t give us families the due respect we deserve by giving him a plea deal.”
