An MS-13 gang member, in the US illegally, faced life behind bars for a savage 2017 quadruple slaying on Long Island — but a federal judge went easy on him Wednesday, despite tearful statements from the victims’ families.

Josue Portillo, 18, pleaded guilty to stabbing four suspected rival teen gang members — and bludgeoning them with tree limbs — in a Central Islip municipal park, in what prosecutors called a “horrific frenzy of violence.”

Portillo, who was 15 when he committed the slayings, was tried as an adult and faced life in prison on four counts of racketeering, murder and a related conspiracy charge.

Federal prosecutors pushed to send him to jail for 60 years — but Central Islip Judge Joseph Bianco shaved five years off his stint, citing Portillo’s age and his guilty plea to his role in the murders of Michael Lopez Banega, 20, Justin Llivicura, 16, Jefferson Villalobos, 18, and Jose Tigre, 18.

“Two years ago, we were a happy family,” said Lopez Banega’s mother, Lourdes, moments before the judge sentenced Portillo. “And he destroyed everything. Everything.”

The weeping mother said Portillo “doesn’t know the harm that he inflicted on us” and that she’s in therapy and taking medication because of her son’s murder.

“My dreams were gone the night that Portillo killed my son,” she said, sobbing.

Portillo and fellow MS-13 members on April 11, 2017 schemed to have a pair of female associates lure five suspected rivals from the 18th Street gang to a wooded area.

There, Portillo and his sick pals ambushed the men with machetes, knives, sticks and an ax.

One of their targets managed to escape and became a government witness.

Portillo admitted that he and another MS-13 gangbanger fatally stabbed Lopez Banega “knowingly, willfully and without coercion.”

But in court Wednesday, defense lawyer Joseph Ryan claimed Portillo was influenced by his peers, as a “juvenile without an adult brain” who was seeking out relief from a bad family situation.

Ryan said his client had been “dealt a bad hand at birth” — his parents abandoned him in El Salvador, leaving him in the care of his 68-year-old grandmother. He was later smuggled into the US in a trailer.

Wearing a tan jail uniform over a short-sleeved shirt, Portillo pleaded for mercy through an interpreter, saying his victims didn’t deserve to die and that as an MS-13er he was “consumed by soccer, girls and marijuana.”



“Please, do not put me in jail for the rest of my life,” Portillo begged the judge. “I know that what I have done was very wrong.”

Even though Bianco didn’t buy Portillo’s argument that he was a mindless MS-13 follower, he didn’t give him a life sentence.

But Bianco offered some words of consolation to the grieving mother.

“We can’t bring your son Michael back … but I can assure you I’ve given the sentence a lot of thought,” the judge said.

Outside court, Lopez Banega’s mom said the sentence was “the consequences of when you do bad things.”

“When Portillo took Michael, everything changed,” she said. “We’re no longer happy.”

Portillo was also sentenced to three years of supervised release upon completion of his sentence but will likely face deportation back to El Salvador if he ever leaves prison. His lawyer said he plans to appeal the sentence.

Additional reporting by Daniel Cassady