We survived a cartel massacre. Our family didn't. Trump will make us all safer.

USA Today

17-05-2025

We survived a cartel massacre. Our family didn't. Trump will make us all safer. | Opinion We know we can never get our mom and brothers back. But we can help our fellow Americans get the safety we all deserve.
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Mexico takes on American gun companies at Supreme Court
Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism as Mexico attempted to hold American gun companies responsible for drug cartel violence.
We can still remember our mom's last words: 'My boy! My boy! My baby boy!'
Moments before, she was ducking her head down like the rest of us – hoping this was just a nightmare and none of the bullets were real.
Not long after she realized that her little boy was taken from her, our mom's life was taken from us, too.
On Nov. 4, 2019, the Juarez Cartel and its brutal forces, La Linea, massacred our family as we drove through northern Mexico. They murdered our mother, Dawna, two of our little brothers, Trevor and Rogan, and six others.
More than five years after surviving the attack, we're still pursuing justice, and we may finally have our first opening to fight back.
It was a miracle that the shooters let us live
On that horrific day, bullets tore through our car. It felt as though the shooting would never stop.
Our clothes were covered in blood, and none of it was ours. We saw our little brothers lying lifeless and our mother dead, still buckled in the driver's seat.
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When the shooting finally ended, we watched monsters dressed in camouflage approach our car. In a panic, we scrambled to cover the windows with garbage bags, suitcases and toys – trying anything to keep them from seeing us.
But before we knew it, we were staring down the barrel of a gun.
They yelled at us in Spanish and forced us to get out of the car. We grabbed our little brother Cody, who was so riddled with bullets that he couldn't move, and our 9-month-old brother, and sat on the ground outside.
We thought this was the end for us all. But by some miracle, they let us live.
Our attackers were never brought to justice
With the attackers gone, we had no choice but to flee on foot. But once we saw the blood trail we were leaving behind, we decided to stop walking and take refuge under a small tree on the side of the road.
One of us, Devin, ran 14 miles through the desert to get help. The other six of us stayed under that tree for more than 10 hours, praying that we would be rescued.
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Days later, we buried our mother and our brothers. And while we are still healing, the killers responsible for this massacre continue to walk free.
The cartels that ripped our family apart are still operating with impunity and profiting from human trafficking, smuggling deadly drugs like fentanyl and terrorizing American families like ours.
But for the first time in years, we have hope. President Donald Trump is taking on the cartels and giving us a reason to believe we may finally get justice.
Trump must add Juarez Cartel to terrorist list
After the 2019 massacre, President Trump boldly called cartels 'terrorist organizations.'
In February 2025, his State Department officially designated eight cartels as such – putting the full force of the federal government up against the cartels and financial networks that support them.
That's a meaningful step forward, and we want to see the Juarez Cartel and La Linea, its enforcement wing – the ones that took the lives of our loved ones – added to that Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
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That way the federal government can cut off their resources and bring them to justice. Their financial networks should be put on notice that they must stop supporting these violent criminals.
That would finally give our family a little peace. We don't want any other kids to experience the grief of losing a mother or siblings the way we did.
We know we can never get our mom and brothers back. But we can help our fellow Americans get the safety we all deserve. And we can help deliver justice to the many families, like ours, who have lost loved ones to cartel violence.
With President Trump leading the charge to fight the cartels, and with the strength of countless survivors standing behind him, a safer and stronger America is within reach.
Devin and Kylie Langford are Arizona residents who survived a cartel massacre in November 2019, when they were 13 and 14 years old, respectively. This column originally appeared in the Arizona Republic.