Former President Donald Trump during his Thursday night rally brought onstage family members of a Marine veteran who was killed two weeks ago in Mexico, about an hour from the US border.
The 31-year-old Marine veteran, Nicholas Quets, was shot to death on Oct. 18 while headed to Sorento, Mexico, by gunmen his family said were believed to have been associated with a cartel.
“What happened to them should happen to nobody,” Trump said of the family members as they were going up on stage.
Quets’ father, Warren Quets, took the stage to say that aside from the State Department, the federal government had not reached out about their son’s death — but that Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) had spoken with him.
“Two weeks ago, I was a completely apolitical actor,” Warren Quet said, noting that the Republican candidates’ consolations changed his mind.
The grieving father said his son was “shot in the back on the way to the beach” by “cowards,” alleging that they were tied to a drug cartel.
He thanked Trump for “calling attention” to his son’s death and praised the “good conversations” he’s since had with the former president and his running mate Vance.
He also said he wants “US involvement” to launch an investigation into what happened with his son.
He asked Trump for “extradition of the killers” since not all suspects can be extradited and a “working policy with Mexico” about drug cartels.
“We’re going to take care of it,” the former president vowed onstage. “We’re going to get that guy, Mexico is going to give him to us.”
The father also asked Trump to make a US code to allow those who kill American citizens abroad to be brought back to the US.
“He’s a decent man,” he said of Trump, saying the Republican candidate had a “tear in his eye” when he heard the story about Nicholas.
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for my family in terms of calling attention to this. It was unreported in the media,” the father added.
His mother, Patricia, begged the crowd “to help us get justice for Nicholas.”
Quets’ father said the Marine veteran was “stolen by the cartel,” adding that he thinks his late son “gave him the power” to speak out.
“When somebody says ‘why was Nick in Mexico?’ … [I ask] if it’s safe for 25 million people to come here, how can it not be safe for my son to go an hour south of the border?” he said, calling out the “political failures” that led to his son’s death.
The crowd broke out into cheers of “fight, fight!” and “Nicholas!”
Trump pledged that if he becomes president, he will “put the drug smugglers and human traffickers” out of business, noting his proposed policies of using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to expedite Tren de Aragua and other illegal migrants out of the US, as well as imposing the death penalty on those migrants who kill American citizens or law enforcement agents.
