Sword-wielding MS-13 thugs who have been terrorizing Long Islanders for years have been rounded up as part of a sweeping Nassau County crackdown of nearly 40 of the notorious gang’s street soldiers — on attempted murder, weapons and illicit drug charges.
Included in the massive bust were five college-aged thugs — accused of being part of the deadly MS-13’s Hempstead Locos Salvatruchas branch — who were allegedly responsible for a machete and knife attack that wounded six during a soccer game in broad daylight at the town’s Kennedy Memorial Park last October.
The attack was so gruesome that one victim needed his gallbladder removed and his diaphragm and liver surgically repaired, authorities said.
The victims ranged in age between 20 and 51.
“We are removing dangerous criminals and gang members from our communities and will continue to fight to keep Nassau County the safest county in America,” Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman told The Post.
Purported El Salvadorian sect leader Ellias Wilfredo Serrano Bonilla, 21, was brought up on eight counts of attempted murder and a laundry list of weapons, robbery and assault charges over the brazen assault on the pitch.
Bonilla, who calls East Meadow home, is believed to have entered the US illegally sometime prior to 2016, and was previously arrested in Nassau on first-degree assault and gang assault charges in early 2020, according to authorities.
Accomplices in the attack, Edras Daniel Velasquez Giron, 19, Jeffrey Bladimir Valladares Archaga, 20, Pedro Martinez Velasquez, 18, and Kelvin Martinez, 19, are all facing charges related to the harrowing incident.
Giron and Archaga, who are both from Honduras, also crossed the US border illegally during Joe Biden’s term in the White House, according to Nassau officials.
Last December, Bonilla, Velasquez and Martinez, along with two others — 24-year-old Kennet Contreras and 18-year-old Edwin Patzan Piri — used machetes and white pipes to allegedly attack a pair of people parked outside a Uniondale laundromat.
“MS-13 has a long and violent history in New York, particularly on Long Island, where its members have terrorized communities for decades,” Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly, a Republican, said in announcing the charges on Monday.
In 2017, President Trump visited MS-13 hotspot Brentwood in nearby Suffolk County to address the violent street gang, while pledging to destroy it.
Blakeman, who authorized the mammoth law enforcement bust this month, said Nassau’s drop in crime has been” significant” since Trump returned to Washington — thanks to the county’s formal partnership with ICE.
“These relationships materially help us incarcerate and deport dangerous criminals that prey on our communities, and as a result, we are the safest county in America,” Blakeman, who is up for reelection in November, added — referencing an August 2024 ranking of safest US counties by US News & World Report.
Rival gangs beefing
The large-scale raids over the past two weeks came at a time when Nassau police observed worrisome upticks in gang violence — most notably a 17-year-old who gunned down a victim as part of an initiation, according to law enforcement sources.
Police have also seen a recent rise in feuds between the MS-13s and rival 18th Street gangs over things as trivial as social media posts and public sightings, which prompted cops to swoop in.
Other gangs like the Trinitarios — the group responsible for the notorious 2018 mistaken identity machete murder of a Bronx teen, “Junior” Guzman-Feliz, who aspired to join the NYPD one day — are leaving a mark on Long Island, too.
“Most of them all have rivalries with each other,” Nassau PD Sgt. John Schmitt told The Post during a ride-along overnight Monday in the Hempstead area, which is often notoriously called “the sixth borough” by locals on the island.
“The violent gang members do have weapons. They’re not out here without weapons.”
During the ride-along, The Post witnessed the arrest of Joel Elvin Paulino El DeJesus — a “known and identified” Trinitario — who was rung up on felony narcotics charges in the heart of the village just after midnight.
Undercover units arrested the thug for allegedly holding seven grams of packaged cocaine hidden in his SUV by a parking lot that’s been an increasing hot spot for danger recently, according to the sergeant.
“We had violence here in this parking lot two nights ago,” added Schmitt.
“We had an attempted murder — stabbing — and several people assaulted in this area.”
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