A Queens MS-13 gang member is headed to federal prison for more than half a century after admitting to two murders that rattled neighborhoods across the borough. Ramiro Gutierrez pleaded guilty to helping plan the Nov. 4, 2018 killing of Victor Alvarenga in Flushing and to fatally shooting Abel Mosso on a 7 train platform in Jackson Heights. In the same Brooklyn federal courtroom, co-defendant Tito Martinez Alvarenga was hit with a 48-year sentence.
According to prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Gutierrez “grabbed the gun” and fired multiple times at Mosso on Feb. 3, 2019, after Mosso was assaulted inside a subway car. The office credited Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI with leading the probe, and its March 11 release lays out the racketeering charges that led to the 55- and 48-year terms.
The sentencings dropped as the Department of Homeland Security has been loudly promoting a nationwide enforcement push it says has produced nearly 8,000 gang-related arrests. Fox News reported that DHS rolled out a “Worst of the Worst” database this winter to showcase those arrests and other enforcement results.
Reaction in New York has been sharply divided. Advocates and some city leaders have blasted broad federal sweeps, while supporters of tougher enforcement point to cases like Gutierrez’s as proof that aggressive federal involvement keeps the most dangerous players off the streets. As reported by the New York Post, DHS officials say the agency has arrested more than 7,800 criminal illegal-alien gang members this year, and the federal push drew protesters during DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s January visit to New York, coverage that was carried by NBC New York.
What the Sentences Mean for Queens
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the Gutierrez and Alvarenga cases are part of a long-running federal campaign against MS-13 in the Eastern District of New York. Since 2003, it notes, hundreds of MS-13 members have been convicted on federal felony charges in the district. In its account, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York stresses that the prosecutions grew out of joint work by HSI, the FBI and local partners, and that long federal sentences are intended to send a message to MS-13 cliques that gun violence on city streets will be met with decades behind bars.
