Biden’s DOJ offers MS-13 gang leader a sweetheart deal after at least 7 murders. Why?

An MS-13 gang leader responsible for at least seven murders has been granted a veritable sweetheart plea deal by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ).

Instead of receiving either the death penalty or life in prison, gang leader Jairo “Funny” Saenz, 28, received only 40 to 60 years in federal prison, according to the New York Post.

He was reportedly all-smiles during the sentencing hearing.

“Jairo Saenz, a honcho with the gang’s Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside clique, smirked as he pleaded guilty to his role in fatal attacks dating to 2016, including giving the order to kill two high school girls who the gang believed disrespected them on social media,” the Post notes.

The two girls, Brentwood High School students Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, were reportedly beaten and hacked to death in 2016.

“My reaction to that is that he’s trying to see his family for the last time because he’ll never see them again,” Mickens’ mother, Elizabeth Alvarado, told the Post. “What he did to my daughter is the same thing — I’ll never see her again.”

“It’s disgraceful,” Suffolk County PBA president Lou Civello said to Fox News regarding the plea deal. “It’s an insult to the families. When you look at how barbaric these crimes were, murdering young kids with machetes, baseball bats, this is a clear case for the death penalty.”

He added that if Saenz gets away with only serving 40 years, that’ll amount to less than six years per murder.

“We’re always grateful for the federal partnership and the resources they bring to the table, but at the same time, we need justice, that’s the important part,” he continued. “If it were true justice, this person should never see the light of day again. There should never be the opportunity to be out and back on our streets.”

David Gelman, a New Jersey-based defense attorney and former prosecutor, added that “this is a very light sentence, considering the circumstances in the fact of this case.”

No kidding!

“The only plea deal that I would’ve offered is life in prison without the possibility of parole,” he continued. “Here these gang members are going to get an opportunity to not only get out while they are still living, but they probably will get out earlier than their expected sentence.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office tried for their part to defend the weak sentence by noting that “our office had been directed by the U.S. Attorney General in 2023 not to seek the penalty if they were convicted of the capital counts.”

The AG in 2023 was of course Merrick Garland, a Democrat.

Another victim whose murder Saenz orchestrated was Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, 29, who made the fatal mistake of wearing a football jersey as he stood in line at a deli in 2017.

According to Fox News, Saenz and his crew mistook the jersey “as a symbol for another gang.”

“Today, Jairo Saenz pleaded guilty to seven murders that can only be described as barbaric, and multiple acts of senseless gang violence that had turned parts of Long Island into a war zone,” Acting US Attorney Carolyn Pokorny said in a statement after Saenz’ sentencing.

“It is my sincere hope that today’s guilty plea brings some measure of solace and closure to the families of the defendant’s victims who continue to mourn the deaths of their loved ones,” she added.

MS-13 violence ballooned so badly during President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration that he met Cuevas and Mickens’ families in person and also instructed his then-attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to go after the gang.

Recall that when the Trump administration began going after MS-13’s brutal killers, Democrats cried foul, with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi going on to claim it was “cruel” to call MS-13 gang members “animals.”

“The federal crackdown at the time led to thousands of deportations of its members,” Fox News notes. “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.”

And then in 2023, then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace told the judge presiding over Saenz’s case that Garland had directed him to stop pursuing the death penalty.

Vivek Saxena

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