The family of a Marine veteran murdered in Mexico told Fox News Digital that they have not heard from President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris nearly two weeks after their son’s killing.
Nicholas Douglas Quets, a 31-year-old Marine veteran who worked for Pima County, Arizona, on water reclamation projects, was shot and killed along the Caborca-Altar Highway in northern Mexico on Oct. 19.
Quets, whose father served 20 years in the U.S. Army and another 20 years in federal law enforcement, was born in Panama City, Panama, and grew up in Latin America. For the past several years, the family lived close to one another in Arizona, and, as an avid outdoorsman who loved the water, Quets was driving with friends down to Rocky Point for a beach trip.
He was killed about 30 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I am apolitical,” Quets’ father, retired Army Lt. Col. Warren Douglas Quets, told Fox News Digital. “But the facts of the matter are these: my American son, doing nothing other than going to the beach an hour from his home was executed by cowardly thugs. The news media decided to suppress it for four days, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, that would have been a great bet.”
“This was the wrong Marine. This was the wrong family,” he said. “This story will not go away. It won’t go away next week after the U.S. elections. This story is going to push and push and push.”
“No matter what happens next week, I am not letting this die,” the father said. “My goal for Nick is that Nick is the beginning of the end for the cartels in Mexico.”
The Quets family said it was Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., who helped facilitate a meeting with Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, while he campaigned in Tucson. Days after their son’s killing, the Quets family then met with former President Donald Trump ahead of his rally in Tempe, and both running mates asked permission before mentioning Quets’ name.
Vance said on stage, “I promise you the cavalry is coming, and when Donald Trump is president we’re going to kick the cartels a–es.”
By contrast, the Quets family said they attempted to get a meeting with the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, when he was campaigning in Phoenix, but staffers told them the event was at capacity and turned them away. Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to headline an event in Phoenix on Thursday, which is Halloween, when Trump is also expected to be back in the state.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and to the Harris campaign several times asking for comment on Quets’ killing but did not hear back.
“In my family’s greatest hour of need for an entity, for a strong government and a strong, strong enterprise, that the United States government is, the only people in an elected capacity or a position seeking authority to run that institution came back to me and expressed concern and made commitments to me [on] how we’ll make it better … were Senator Vance and President Trump. That’s 100% fact,” Quets said.
“I do believe in Donald Trump as a man of his word – not the TV character, not the billionaire – but a person who I looked at face to face and talked with,” Quets told Fox News Digital. “America got a little bit weaker. My family was destroyed, but America got a little bit weaker. Mexico got a little bit weaker. Those cartels got a little bit stronger. And the only way to reverse that is to go after these people.”
Quets’ brother-in-law, retired Air Force Capt. Philip Sweet, told Fox News Digital that he currently works in federal law enforcement and is confident President Biden would have been briefed about Quets’ killing.
“President Biden, he was in Arizona on Friday. We heard nothing. There was no outreach. There’s still been no outreach,” Sweet told Fox News Digital on Tuesday. “It’s not because we’re picking one side or the other … we’re an apolitical family. Before this, you wouldn’t have had either of us talk about our opinions. But what I can say is that our goal was to raise awareness for this.”
“Within, you know, less than 100 hours from my brother-in-law’s murder, we had elected officials, Senator Vance, and we had President Trump take – each of them – take 15 minutes out of their extremely busy schedules to meet with us,” Sweet said. “It’s obvious to me and my family we have 100% confidence in President Trump and Senator Vance.… We know who cares about us, and that’s obvious to us. It’s President Trump and Senator Vance. I’m shocked on multiple levels that nobody from our current administration, neither of our U.S. senators, our governor, nobody has reached out.”
Quets said he met Vance just four days after his son was killed.
“He says, ‘You’re talking to me as JD Vance, Marine, and I want to know what it is, what happened,'” Quets recalled. “‘And I want to know what I can do to help you.'”
“And I know how busy those men are in a two-week political fight of their lives,” Quets continued. “So I said everything … Vance looked at me, and he got emotional about it, and he said, ‘Tell me what I can do to help.'”
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“And the next morning, we got called by the Trump campaign rally,” he recalled. “My daughter-in-law and my wife carried a picture of my son with them.”
“Trump looked at the picture before he said anything,” Quets said. “He started to cry … had tears in his eyes. And he looks at everybody, looks at my wife, looks at my daughter-in-law, says, ‘Tell me what happened.’ And at that point, you could tell he was a man of action. And I have been around a lot of people that are. And he was angry, and he said, ’Tell me what I can do to help.'”
Officials in Sonora, Mexico, reportedly said that Nicholas Quets had not stopped at an illicit checkpoint run by cartel members, and a group of armed men followed his pick-up truck and opened fire in a “direct attack.”
While reports indicate Mexican authorities made arrests, Quets’ father said he is relying on the FBI to conduct its investigation and wants his son’s killers extradited to the U.S. – as just the start. The family said they later learned Nicholas was driving along a similar route where two Arizona women were shot dead by alleged cartel members weeks earlier, killings they say were not well reported in the media.
“I ask you to help us,” Nicholas Quets’ mother, Patricia Marie Quets, said. “Speak for Nicholas and all of the nameless, faceless victims. This is happening every day. We have the power to make the change. Help us.”
The Quets family said they have heard from the U.S. consulate in Mexico, which helped repatriate Quets’ remains, as well as the State Department, mid-level FBI officials and hundreds of members of the military community.
“And as my father-in-law said, this is not just a border state issue. This is a national issue. This is a national security issue,” Sweet said. “You know, I spent 11 years in the Air Force. He has over 40 years of government service. I’m in federal law enforcement. I deal with this all the time. And, you know, you never think that this stuff was going to happen to you, but you think, wow, you know, the government’s going to have my back.”
“I understand they’re busy. But at this point, I can tell you that President Trump and Senator Vance’s actions speak louder than any senseless words or offerings that the current administration can offer us,” Sweet said. “One side cares about you, and that’s President Trump and Senator Vance. They care about the American people. They care about my family. They care about your family. That’s something that I think speaks volumes.”
A career Latin American security specialist, Warren Quets said he views the U.S. immigration problem as tied to a lack of security in the Americas, particularly in Mexico, which drives people north in pursuit of economic and physical security. In addition to his son’s killers being extradited and prosecuted in the U.S., he said he wants the United States to work bilaterally or unilaterally with Mexico and other countries.
He referenced his experience in Plan Columbia, which dismantled Pablo Escobar’s control of the drug trade, and advocated for the United States to develop a similar strategy with Mexico.
“What I need is to use Nick’s death as part of my healing to have the word get out and that people understand it. And for Nick’s death to be the best day in the history of the cartels. Every day after that gets a little bit worse for them,” he said. “I’m talking about dismantling cartels and bringing the drug kingpins into the United States.”
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