Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has authorized federal prosecutors in Los Angeles to seek the death penalty against three MS-13 gang members charged with gunning down an FBI informant at a south Los Angeles grocery store, according to an April 8 letter obtained by the New York Post.
The defendants, Dennis Anaya Urias, 27; Grevil Zelaya Santiago, 25; and Roberto Carlos Aguilar, 30, each face one count of murder in aid of racketeering and two counts of conspiracy to retaliate against a witness. Two of the three are illegal immigrants. The case is set for trial July 21 in the Central District of California.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Thursday that his office would pursue capital punishment after receiving Blanche's letter. He did not mince words about the stakes.
"The death penalty is reserved for some of the most heinous crimes. The defendants in this case have met that criteria."
Court documents paint a grim picture of what happened on Feb. 18 last year. Prosecutors allege that members of MS-13's Bagos clique had learned that the victim, identified in filings only as "H.B.", was cooperating with federal authorities. A clique leader gave the "green light" to target him.
Essayli said H.B. encountered Aguilar inside a Superior Grocers at Figueroa Avenue and 92nd Street about an hour before the killing. What followed was a coordinated effort to silence a man who had put his life on the line to help law enforcement.
H.B. survived an initial attempt on his life when one gang member's gun failed to fire. He called 911. Court filings described two people connected to that first attempt, one "dressed in all black, with a handkerchief covering his face," the other a "Latino" who "had long hair, and was wearing a black top and blue jeans." An FBI special agent later identified the long-haired man as Aguilar.
H.B. retreated inside the grocery store. Within minutes, a Honda CR-V pulled up outside and two other men climbed out. Security camera footage showed two men, alleged to be Urias and Santiago, chasing H.B. into the store.
During the pursuit, H.B. managed to call his FBI handler. The agent's affidavit, filed with the court, describes what happened next in stark terms: the agent "heard through the telephone several gunshots and H.B. stopped responding."
The informant was dead. His killers walked away, for a time. The brazenness of the act, carried out in a public store in the middle of a neighborhood, is the kind of violence that federal prosecutors say gang organizations use to terrorize communities and enforce loyalty through fear.
Three days after the murder, the FBI was already closing in. An agent listened in on a phone call between another cooperating witness and the Bagos clique "shotcaller," identified in the affidavit only as A.R.
A.R. told the witness he "had to clean out my garbage, you understand, and well that work you cannot say no to." Prosecutors treated the remark as a thinly veiled admission, an acknowledgment that the killing was ordered and carried out as gang business.
The criminal complaint in the case notes that MS-13 members have often "assaulted, robbed, murdered or used threats of harm and violence" to "enhance" their status within the gang. The organization, prosecutors allege, "promoted a climate of fear in the community through threats of harm and violence."
All three defendants were arrested in May 2025 as part of a broader racketeering and methamphetamine trafficking case. They have remained in federal custody since.
Essayli drew explicit attention to the defendants' nationalities and legal status in the United States. He told reporters that Urias and Aguilar are Salvadoran nationals, Urias holds a green card, while Aguilar is an illegal immigrant. Santiago, he said, is an illegal immigrant from Honduras.
That two of the three men charged with executing a federal informant were in the country illegally adds a sharp edge to an already grave case. It is a reality that elected officials and judges will have to reckon with as the trial approaches. An Obama-era judge recently ordered the release of an MS-13 member with a prior rape record from ICE detention, a decision that drew fierce criticism from law enforcement and immigration hawks alike.
Essayli left no ambiguity about the administration's posture. He said "thugs and terrorists will find no shelter under this administration. If you take someone's life, then you will forfeit your own."
The prosecution falls under the umbrella of Operation Take Back America, the federal initiative targeting drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations. The operation has become a centerpiece of the Justice Department's enforcement strategy, and this case, a gang assassination of a cooperating federal witness, represents exactly the kind of violence the program was designed to confront.
The decision to seek the death penalty is itself a statement. Federal capital prosecutions are rare. They require explicit authorization from the Attorney General's office, and the bar is high. Blanche's April 8 letter signals that the DOJ views the murder of H.B. not merely as a gang killing but as an act so severe it warrants the ultimate penalty.
The case also raises uncomfortable questions about the government's ability to protect the people who risk everything to help it. H.B. was a federal informant. He was cooperating with the FBI. He was known to the gang. And he was gunned down in a grocery store while on the phone with his handler. The system that asked him to cooperate could not keep him alive. That failure deserves scrutiny, not to excuse his killers, but to ensure the next informant does not meet the same fate.
Federal prosecutors have brought serious cases against violent criminal organizations in recent months, from high-profile terrorism extraditions to domestic gang takedowns. The MS-13 prosecution in Los Angeles may prove to be among the most consequential.
The trial is set for July 21 in the Central District of California. Urias, Santiago, and Aguilar remain in federal custody. If convicted and sentenced to death, the case would mark one of the most significant capital prosecutions tied to transnational gang violence in recent memory.
Several open questions remain. Court documents have not disclosed the full identity of H.B. or of A.R., the Bagos clique leader whose intercepted phone call may prove central to the prosecution's case. The broader racketeering and methamphetamine trafficking investigation that led to the May 2025 arrests may yet produce additional charges or defendants. Questions about how the gang learned of H.B.'s cooperation, and whether the FBI took adequate steps to protect him, have not been publicly addressed.
The scrutiny of federal law enforcement conduct is a recurring theme in American public life, and it cuts in every direction. In this case, the agents appear to have done their jobs in building the prosecution. Whether they did enough before the murder is a different matter.
A man cooperated with the FBI, and MS-13 killed him for it. The government now says it will seek the lives of the men who took his. That is not vengeance. It is the minimum a country owes to someone who trusted its word.