Angel Families Share Pain, Urge Crackdown on Cartels and Fentanyl

PHOENIX—Patricia Quets of Arizona said she once believed that if she worked hard and raised her children right, her family would remain untouched by cartel violence in Mexico.

“I was wrong,” Quets said.

On Oct. 18, 2024, her son, U.S. Marine Nicholas Quets, 31, was driving his F-250 with Arizona plates to Rocky Point, Mexico, when he encountered a Sinaloa cartel checkpoint.

What followed, she told lawmakers in Phoenix on May 28, was a seven-mile chase that ended when gunmen opened fire, striking him in the back and heart and leaving him to die on the highway.

“Nicholas was murdered in cold blood by ruthless cartel thugs. This was a deliberate attack on an innocent American,” Quets said, describing herself as “a mom on a mission” to raise awareness and push for change.

“Cartel violence doesn’t discriminate by race, nationality, or politics,” she said.

She represented one of six Angel Families that shared stories of grief and loss, with her husband, Douglas Quets, seated beside her. 

An Angel Family is a family that has lost a loved one in a violent crime involving an illegal immigrant.

Arizona lawmakers, along with U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and Sara Carter, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, joined a panel at the Arizona Senate building organized by The American Border Story.

Anne Fundner of California said her 15-year-old son Weston died in 2022 after taking a counterfeit Percocet laced with fentanyl.

“He was the kid who lifted everyone up in the room. He loved surfing more than anything,” she said.

She said he took what he thought was a single pill from a classmate.

“It wasn’t a Percocet at all,” she said. “It was a counterfeit little blue pill with pure fentanyl in it.”

Fundner blamed border policies for fentanyl trafficking that made the drug accessible.

“Weston deserved better,” she said. “Every child in Arizona deserves to be safe. Every child in the United States deserves to be safe.”

The American Border Story, led by Executive Director Nicole Kiprilov, supports families affected by border crime, drug trafficking, and cartel violence.

“Every single person sitting at this table represents someone who was loved deeply. Someone with dreams, routines, inside jokes, futures, families, and people who wake up every morning carrying unimaginable pain and unimaginable grief,” Kiprilov said.

“What makes these stories especially painful is that all of them were 100 percent preventable.”

She blamed four years of open-border policies under the previous administration for fueling cartel activity and driving fentanyl deaths to roughly 100,000 a year.

“Some of these victims survived physically, but their families are still living with lifelong trauma every single day,” said Kiprilov, who is also president of the Coalition for Military Excellence.

Biggs, a Republican candidate for Arizona governor, said the deaths represent “a profound” failure that could have been avoided if U.S. immigration laws had been enforced and the country’s borders secured.

He said drug deaths have declined nationally under the Trump administration, while the number in Arizona has increased by 17 percent.

“This is the largest increase of any of the five states that saw increases,” he said. “The statistics are worse when considering fentanyl.”

While the number of fentanyl deaths fell by 31 percent nationwide, the number in Arizona increased by 30 percent, Biggs said.

He also said that Arizona has seized roughly half of all fentanyl pills confiscated in the country over three years.

“Arizona remains a hotspot for drug and human trafficking—in fact, the hottest spot in the nation along the southwest border,” Biggs said.

Carter, appointed in January by President Donald Trump as the nation’s drug czar, said border security is now the administration’s top priority.

She said the goal is to ensure that “no other mother or father has to suffer, no family member, brother, sister, has to suffer what the families here have had to endure and will endure till their very last breath.”

“It is an unimaginable pain,” she said.

On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order designating cartels and other criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.

Under Carter, the administration is targeting cartels financially and operationally, including through interdiction and extradition efforts as part of Operation Take Back America.

The victims of drug trafficking are the “casualties of America’s longest war,” Carter said.

“Stop the guns, stop the money. Not all of this is wire transfers or digital transfers. You deport people. You remove them,” she said.

“And when they go to a sanctuary city that refuses to cooperate, you use, again, the sanctions necessary to inspire compliance with federal law in that local jurisdiction, which is a sanctuary city.”

Crane, a former Navy SEAL, called the situation a war.

“Make no mistake about it. This is a war. This is a war against cartels, careless politicians, and the partisan media,” Crane said.

“We have failed you. We have failed all of these families up here, and it disgusts me.”

Each Angel Family parent then shared their story.

Mary Ann Mendoza lost her son, Mesa police Sgt. Brandon Mendoza, in 2014 when he was killed by a wrong-way drunk driver.

“This illegal had driven over 35 miles the wrong way on our freeways here in Phoenix, in the [fast] lane,” Mendoza said. “Brandon never saw him coming, and this illegal ran into Brandon going 104 miles an hour, head on.”

She said officers arrived at her door at 3 a.m. with the news no parent is prepared to hear.

“Brandon was the most fun-loving, compassionate, caring police officer that you ever would have met in your life,” she said.

Patti Fox of Colorado said her daughter, Carissa-Aspens, dreamed of launching a skincare line and traveling the world.

On March 28, 2025, shortly after her 22nd birthday, she was struck by a driver who ran a stop sign while she was riding on the back of a motorcycle. The collision threw her into a concrete barrier.

“It was supposed to be a light-hearted night of fun. She texted me at 8:15 and said, ‘Now that I am embracing all that life has to offer me, I couldn’t be happier,’” Fox said.

Two hours later, Carissa-Aspens was hit and left critically injured.

“This driver and her passengers exited the vehicle, looked at her, and fled,” she said. “They didn’t call 911. They didn’t even stop to see if she was OK. They thought of themselves.”

Fox said the driver, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was released within 48 hours on a $500 fine while her daughter lay in intensive care.

Carissa-Aspens, now 23, can no longer speak and requires lifelong care.

“Ambiguous grief is when you don’t have closure,” her mother said.

“Grieving somebody sitting right in front of you is so incredibly painful.”

Fernando Basurto, a military veteran, said his 18-year-old grandson, Fernando, planned to join the U.S. Air Force and become an FBI agent one day. 

He was killed on May 19, 2016, by one of two illegal immigrant gang members at a party, days before graduating high school in California.

“My grandson was hit by a nine millimeter,” Basurto said. “He died immediately. Wrong guy, wrong place, wound up getting killed. It’s devastating—it brought me to my knees.”

Karen Griffin of Tucson said her son Tyler, a journalist, died in September 2020 after taking a fentanyl-laced pill given by a neighbor he trusted for pain.

“He passed away about the same time that Brandon, Mary Ann’s son, passed away,” she said.

“My son is a one-pill-can-kill statistic now.”

Tyler’s case took 1,175 days to reach a conviction.

Biggs closed the session by urging action.

“Policies undermine the rule of law,” he said. “When the rule of law is undermined, freedom is gone. And when you have anarchy, you have disaster. You have sorrow. That’s what we see.”