Story perspectives

Illegal Immigrant Surrenders, Charged with Two Murders

5/3/2026

Summary

Story summary

Rony Yahir Alvarenga Rivera, 22, voluntarily surrendered at a Lynbrook 7-Eleven after calling police to admit the killings.
He was charged with first-degree and second-degree murder for killing 42-year-old Wendy’s employee Ana Maria del Aguila-Cordova outside the restaurant and 32-year-old Eddy Raquel Hernandez Castillo, who was stabbed in her Valley Stream home.
Police said Alvarenga Rivera lived with both victims and entered the United States illegally from El Salvador in 2016.

History

Historical Context

Operation Wetback, launched in June 1954 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s INS chief Joseph Swing, deported roughly 233 000 Mexican workers that fiscal year, marking the peak of 1950s border enforcement. Decades later, illegal entrant Rony Yahir Alvarenga Rivera crossed from El Salvador and was arrested for a double murder in Lynbrook, New York, illustrating the enduring controversy over U.S. immigration raids.

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Story summary

Rony Yahir Alvarenga Rivera, 22, voluntarily surrendered at a Lynbrook 7-Eleven after calling police to admit the killings.
He was charged with first-degree and second-degree murder for killing 42-year-old Wendy’s employee Ana Maria del Aguila-Cordova outside the restaurant and 32-year-old Eddy Raquel Hernandez Castillo, who was stabbed in her Valley Stream home.
Police said Alvarenga Rivera lived with both victims and entered the United States illegally from El Salvador in 2016.

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