Warren and Patricia Quets already know the murderous potential of criminal gangs operating south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Their son Nicholas, a Marine Corps veteran, was murdered in October in northern Mexico after being stopped at a “checkpoint” manned by gunmen of the Sinaloa Cartel, according to Fox News.
In a video released by the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, they want their fellow Americans to understand it, too — and what the Trump administration is doing about it.
The video is below:
Warren Quets, himself a retired Army lieutenant colonel, described how his 31-year-old son had ventured across the border on a trip to Rocky Point, Mexico, in the state of Sonora.
En route, he was stopped at a Sinaloa cartel checkpoint that included a force of “11 different cars and about 25 different people,” Quets said.
“They tried to steal his pickup truck, and then those cowards shot my son in the back, through the heart, and so he was killed on the spot.
“And so they went after him, targeted him, as a known American who didn’t do anything except drive through the country.”
Do you think the cartels have major American influence?
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his intent to target the drug cartels in his return to the White House.
As noted in a DHS news release that accompanied the video, Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office, designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
Shortly after the killing, the Quets met with Trump, then still a presidential candidate, as Fox News reported at the time.
In the video released Wednesday, Warren Quets made it clear the couple got no similar support from then-President Joe Biden or then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
“But in the whole time that occurred, I never received any feedback from the previous administration, even though I had begged for it,” he said.
In the video, Quets also praised DHS and Secretary Kristi Noem for re-establishing VOICE, an office for Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, a government outreach effort for American families victimized by violence related to illegal immigration. (Even establishment media outlets like The Associated Press have acknowledged the role Mexican cartels play in the illegal immigration trade.)
The office had been shuttered by the Biden administration, according to a DHS news release.
Quets also praised Trump’s designation of the cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
“I felt validated and vindicated,” he said. “It makes things safer for us and puts them on the defensive.”
For her part, Patricia Quets spoke little during the video, but her one statement might have summed it up best.
“We want to send a message that targeting Americans anywhere has legal consequences,” she said.
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