By Matt Rooney
25 years ago, America learned a horrifying lesson: when law enforcement agencies don’t share information, bad people can slip through the cracks — with catastrophic consequences.
New Jersey’s sanctuary-state experiment is tempting fate by moving in the opposite direction, Save Jerseyans.
Let’s revisit the history for younger voters (or anyone who may’ve forgotten over the last quarter of a century): the 9/11 Commission led by former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean Sr. concluded that information-sharing failures contributed to America’s inability to disrupt al-Qaeda’s plot. Different agencies possessed different pieces of the puzzle. Bureaucratic barriers, technological shortcomings and legal restrictions — some real, others perceived — helped prevent investigators from putting those pieces together in time.
The Commission famously examined the pre-9/11 separation between intelligence and criminal investigators known as “the wall.” In practice, restrictions were sometimes interpreted even more broadly than necessary.
The result?
“The information flow withered,” the Commission concluded.
America paid an unimaginable price. 749 New Jerseyans and hundreds of our fellow citizens from other states died and the world was forever changed, all because some of the hijackers were able to ‘hide in plain sight’ in New Jersey.
Immigration information was also part of the picture. The hijackers included known al-Qaeda operatives who could have been watchlisted. Members of the group committed immigration violations, made false statements and exploited weaknesses in America’s border and immigration systems.
The lesson should’ve been obvious and permanent: government shouldn’t erect unnecessary barriers between law enforcement agencies and then assume it knows which pieces of information will matter.
Trenton apparently missed the memo.
New Jersey’s Immigrant Trust Directive – now enshrined in statute as of March thanks to Mikie Sherrill and her fellow Democrats over in the legislature – deliberately restricts circumstances in which state and local law enforcement may cooperate with federal immigration authorities. It limits certain immigration-status inquiries, access to nonpublic law-enforcement resources, participation in civil immigration enforcement and cooperation with ICE detainers.
Sanctuary advocates insist these restrictions make communities safer by encouraging illegal immigrants to cooperate with local police without fearing deportation.
But there’s an unavoidable problem with that argument: government doesn’t know what it doesn’t know.
Consider 2024.
Eight Tajik nationals with suspected ISIS ties were placed under arrest in New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. They had crossed the southern border and initially cleared government screening. Only later did intelligence concerning possible ISIS connections emerge. Authorities apparently didn’t have enough evidence at that stage to charge them with terrorism offenses. Instead, ICE detained them using immigration authority while working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Think about what that means.
Today’s supposedly routine immigration matter can become tomorrow’s national-security investigation when another agency uncovers the missing piece.
Imagine local police encounter an illegal immigrant wanted by ICE but possessing no known terrorism connection. New Jersey’s sanctuary restrictions can limit cooperation based upon what authorities know at that moment.
Then federal intelligence discovers something two weeks later.
Suddenly, yesterday’s “civil immigration matter” looks considerably less harmless.
That’s why the central lesson of September 11th remains relevant.
The 9/11 Commission warned about institutional resistance to sharing information and specifically recognized the potential counterterrorism value contained in immigration records. America consequently spent years breaking down information silos among intelligence, immigration and law-enforcement agencies.
New Jersey is consciously creating another one.
No governor, attorney general or bureaucrat can know which jail booking, immigration violation, traffic stop or database entry will ultimately become the dot investigators desperately need to connect.
Sanctuary advocates believe restricting cooperation makes New Jersey safer.
History demands that we ask a harder question:
What if the information Trenton decides isn’t worth sharing today is exactly the information America desperately wishes it had shared tomorrow?
After 9/11, we learned the terrible cost of walls between law-enforcement agencies.
New Jersey shouldn’t need another tragedy to learn it again.
