Three young men who belong to the violent MS-13 gang have been arrested in a Long Island machete attack, the latest in a string of gang attacks that's terrorized communities there in recent months.
Brothers Fidel Hernandez, 23, and Jose Hernandez, 26, of New Cassel, and 18-year-old Miguel Urias Arguenta of Westbury, are facing attempted murder charges in the attack in Westbury just after midnight Sunday.
Court documents state that one of the brothers approached the 19-year-old victim and asked, "Why are you laughing?"
The victim replied, "I can laugh whenever I want," according to the documents.
That's when Fidel swung a machete at the teen, hitting him in the stomach and scraping him. As the teen tried to defend himself, Arguenta fired a 9-mm handgun at him. The three suspects then ran off.
Police arrested them Tuesday; the Hernandez brothers are facing additional weapons charges.
The brothers are also accused in a Jan. 15 machete attack in Westbury, in which they allegedly confronted a 19-year-old man on the street and slashed him in the face with a machete, leaving a four-inch gash, according to Nassau Police Chief of Department Kevin Smith.
The Hernandez brothers are undocumented immigrants from El Salvador; Arguenta, who was also born in El Salvador, entered the country as an undocumented minor. Fidel Hernandez and Arguenta have numerous prior arrests, and Arguenta has a criminal case pending from 2016, according to Smith.
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement says it's not clear when the Hernandez brothers entered the U.S., and it first learned of them while working with Nassau police on this case. ICE's Homeland Security Investigations will take custody of them once they're released from local custody.
"All three have demonstrated that they are extremely dangerous people," said Smith. "That said, they are off the streets and we encourage anyone who may have encountered them to contact police."
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He declined to detail the encounters the victims had with their attackers, saying that investigators have been frustrated by lack of cooperation stemming from fear, and he wanted other potential witnesses and victims to feel comfortable approaching police.
Smith says Nassau police are investigating a possible connection to the bloodshed linked to MS-13 in neighboring Suffolk county, where the towns of Central Islip and Brentwood have been grappling with a string of deaths linked to the gang. Eleven young people were killed in recent months -- violently, with blades, some so badly slashed they were left unrecognizable.
MS-13, or the Mara Salvatrucha, is believed by federal prosecutors to have thousands of members across the U.S., primarily immigrants from Central America. It has a stronghold in Los Angeles, where it emerged in the 1980s as a neighborhood street gang.
But its true rise began after members were deported back to El Salvador in the 1990s. There, the gang thrived and spread to Honduras. MS-13 and rival groups there now control entire towns, rape girls and young women, massacre students, bus drivers and merchants who refuse to pay extortion, and kill competitors or youths who simply refuse to join.
That violence has prompted a migration of people trying to escape, especially children, who have streamed north because of a U.S. policy allowing people under 18 who arrive without parents to stay in the country temporarily with relatives or friends.
Since the fall of 2013, the U.S. has placed 165,000 unaccompanied minors. Long Island has been a frequent landing spot. Suffolk County, which includes Brentwood and Central Islip, has gotten 4,500. Neighboring Nassau County has received 3,800.
Authorities in Suffolk have said that MS-13 preys on recent immigrants, looking to provide the kind of personal relationship that they lack in a new country.
"There's a host of factors as to why MS-13 would prey on immigrant families, but it boils down to the fact that MS-13, they are individuals who prey on the vulnerable," Suffolk Police Commissioner Tim Sini previously said. "They engage in acts of violence, they engage in acts of savagery."
Trump has promised to eradicate the gang in the U.S. through strict enforcement of immigration law.
"We are putting MS-13 in jail and getting them the hell out of our country," he told The Associated Press last week. "They are a bad group, and somebody said they are as bad as al-Qaida, which is a hell of a reference. ... We are out in Long Island cleaning out the MS-13 scum."
