EXCLUSIVE: California mother and grandmother Angie Morfin, whose 13-year-old son, Ruben, was executed at point-blank range by an illegal alien gang member, shared a message for incoming Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin: "Make sure no other mother has to get the call I did."
"Ruben was just a little boy with dreams of growing up, getting married, and having a family of his own," she told Fox News Digital, adding, "For 34 years I've fought to keep his memory alive, so he didn't die in vain."
She shared that she is hopeful that Mullin, a current Republican senator from Oklahoma who is set to take the reins at DHS at the end of the month, "will continue to listen to Angel Families and stand with us as we fight to make sure no other mother has to get the call I did."
In a recent interview with The American Border Story, shared exclusively with Fox News Digital, Morfin said her family remains devastated decades after losing Ruben.
"I cry for him today, like if it was just yesterday," she shared.
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In the winter of 1994, Ruben, a young Hispanic teenager with no gang affiliation, was chased down and shot in the back of the head by Mexican national Ezequiel Mariscal near Orange County, California. Ruben had been walking with a group of friends to a party.
Morfin said that though her family was living in Oceanside, just north of San Diego, at the time, she had sent Ruben to stay with his grandparents during the holidays over concerns about gangs in their area.
Then one night, just after midnight, Morfin said she got a call.
"I grabbed the phone, and I could hear my mom screaming, 'They shot Nino, they shot Nino.' I knew it was my baby because that's what we called him, because he was so small," she said.
Morfin said she and her husband rushed to the hospital.
"It was probably the longest ride of my life. I was scared. I didn't know what I was going to see when I got there," she explained.
Once there, she was made to wait.
"They told me he was dying. That if he made it through the night, that he would be a vegetable for the rest of his life because they had just shot off half of his brain," she recounted.
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"Finally, my husband got to go in, and he came out crying, and told me not to go in. Just to remember him the way he was, and I go, 'No, this was my baby you're talking about. I have to see for myself.'"
Inside the room where Ruben was being kept on life support, Morfin said her son was bandaged and greatly disfigured.
"I could see my baby on that table. His body was shaking from all the machines he had on. He had bandages on his head, and his eye was hanging out," she recalled. "I asked if I could give him one last kiss before they cut [life support]. And I walked close to my baby, and I gave him his last kiss. In his good eye, he had two teardrops."
"All I kept trying to do in my mind was stop the bullet," she added.
According to Morfin, the shooter had been previously deported. He was a teenager at the time of the shooting and a member of the Posole street gang. After the shooting, he fled to Mexico and was later sentenced to 45 years in a Mexican state prison.
After losing Ruben, Morfin said, "Everything changed about me, everything."
Morfin founded Moms Against Gang Violence, a California-based advocacy group for stricter law enforcement. She has also testified before Congress on the need for stricter immigration enforcement. She explained that her advocacy on behalf of victims like Ruben is "my way of keeping him alive."
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She praised President Donald Trump's hard-line policy against illegal immigration, saying "it takes guts to do what he's doing."
"He helped me give my son a voice," she said.
"There's a lot of new victims," she went on, slamming current Democrats, saying they "only have one agenda … to bring in more Democrats."
Nicole Kiprilov, executive director of The American Border Story, told Fox News Digital that the Morfins' story is a "heartbreaking reminder that behind every statistic is a child whose life was stolen, and a family forced to live with that loss forever."
"Angel Families like Angie's have spent decades fighting to make sure their loved ones are not forgotten," said Kiprilov. "We're hopeful that Secretary Mullin will continue listening to these families and put the safety of American communities first."
