Reckless Border Policy Took Anne Fundner’s 15-Year-Old Son. It Would Not Take Her Voice.

Anne Fundner made a promise to her son Weston the day he was born: I will always keep you safe. She had no idea a pill laced with fentanyl would break that promise 15 years later.

Fundner spoke Saturday to grassroots leaders at Heritage Action’s Southwest Sentinel Summit, which focuses on the most pressing social and political issues facing the country.

Fundner began her speech by transporting listeners back to the moment she first met Weston.

“I don’t want people to remember my son for the worst day of his life. I want you to meet him the way I did,” Fundner said as she described the moment baby Weston was placed into her arms as the rest of the world faded away.

“ I realized I had just experienced the kind of love that I never even knew existed, the kind that changes you forever, the kind that makes you wonder how you’ll ever sleep again because your heart no longer belongs to your own body,” Fundner continued.

The bond between Fundner and her son only grew stronger as he grew older.

“Weston grew into the boy I had dreamed about,” Fundner explained. “He loved football. He loved hockey, surfing, e-biking with his friends around Dana Point. He was funny. He had that smile that was infectious and a laugh that was contagious. He was the kind of teenager who still hugged his mom and who still talked to me about everything.”

Fentanyl was the last thing on the minds of Weston and his family.

“My husband took [the kids] camping,” Fundner said. “We went on beautiful vacations. This was not something that happened to an involved family and a loving family like ours, and a God-loving family.”

 ”He wasn’t looking for fentanyl,” Fundner continued. “He wasn’t an addict, and he did not want to die. He was fifteen, a normal fifteen-year-old boy living a good life.”

When he transferred into public school as a freshman, Weston experienced the all-too-familiar desire to belong. One night in a moment of peer pressure, Weston took a pill he was told was a Percocet. 

“He believed it was safe,” Fundner told the crowd. “He thought he could score some cool points, and he had no idea it was a counterfeit pill laced with deadly fentanyl. One decision, one counterfeit pill, one moment of peer pressure changed everything.”

“”He went to sleep, and he never woke up,” Fundner said. “We were blindsided.”

In one of the worst seasons of her life, Fundner vowed “I was going to fight” so that another parent would never have to go through what she did. Fundner’s resilience led her to the stage of the Republican National Convention in 2024.

“One year later to the exact day, I stood on that stage at the Republican National Convention, and I stood beside President Trump as he signed into law the Halt Fentanyl Act, one of the biggest honors of my life,” Fundner said.

“Reckless border policy took my son’s voice, but they weren’t going to get mine,” Fundner recalled. “God would use Weston’s story through my voice to save lives. People have told me God had a purpose for Weston’s death, and I hated hearing that. I still struggle with it. But as I walked off the RNC stage, I knew that night they were right.”

Fundner slowly began to watch the good that could come from tragic loss.

“Weston became the face of this fight that night, and since, I became a mom on a mission, relentless.”

Fundner reminded the audience that Americans cannot look away from the “reckless border policies” that “exploit the vulnerable.”

“ Weston did not die so we could keep making the same deadly mistakes,” Fundner said. “He died because the people in power in 2022 chose politics over protection, power and greed over the safety of Americans.”

Fundner said President Donald Trump’s deportations, the HALT Fentanyl Act, and his support for angel moms like her have given her hope.

“I don’t care how they paint him,” Fundner said. “That man is all heart. I’ve watched this issue now be treated as a national priority, and it is a stark contrast from the last administration, where my face was buried in my hands, wondering, ‘Why isn’t anyone doing anything?’”

Fundner could not keep the promise she made to Weston in that hospital room, but she’s made a new promise to every other family in America.

 ”I began this story about a mother in an operating room whispering a promise to her newborn son, ‘I will never let anything bad happen to you,’” Fundner said. “And I couldn’t keep that promise for Weston, but I can spend the rest of my waking days fighting so every mother and father has a chance to keep theirs.”