An admitted MS-13 gang member who had been booted from the US after killing a man in Huntington, was arrested again Tuesday — back on Long Island.
William Umberto Martinez Chavez, 40, had been deported in 2017 after he was convicted of manslaughter and did time for the fatal stabbing of a man in May 2000 outside a Huntington deli, federal prosecutors said.
But the Salvadoran killer — who has MS-13 tattoos on his chest and stomach — sneaked back into the country and was nabbed in Huntington on Tuesday.
“This office is firmly committed to prosecuting criminals who illegally re-enter the United States, especially MS-13 gang members who break into the country after deportations resulting from violent-crime convictions,” said Eastern District US Attorney Richard Donoghue in a statement announcing Chavez’s apprehension.
In 2000, Martinez allegedly plunged a knife into Jose Armando Garcia after an argument outside a Huntington Station bodega.
He was convicted of manslaughter two years after the crime, but maintained his innocence.
He pleaded with a Long Island judge to give him a lenient sentence, claiming he didn’t know what he was signing when he inked a confession.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said at his sentencing, Newsday reported. “I didn’t know what they were writing. I didn’t know what I was signing.”
Chavez was busted outside his Huntington house Tuesday morning by ICE officers, authorities said.
After he was taken into custody, officers took his fingerprints and matched them to sets that were taken when he was arrested in 2000 and when he was deported in 2017.
He was carrying a Mexican driver’s license bearing his name at the time of his arrest, federal prosecutors said.
Chavez, who claims he is no longer affiliated with the violent street gang, is now charged with illegal re-entry into the US, for which he faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He was remanded after appearing in Central Islip federal court Tuesday.
Chavez’s lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment.