What if the government changed policies that affected public safety, but didn't tell you exactly what had changed?
Not because the information was classified or unknowable, but because officials believed certain facts might stigmatize people, create controversy, or complicate a political narrative.
Wouldn't you want to know?
More importantly, wouldn't you need to know to make informed decisions about how to protect your family?
That is what the Biden administration's record and Illinois' approach to immigration should teach us: when government makes consequential policy decisions, citizens deserve candor about what is being done, what laws and safeguards are being changed or weakened, and what consequences may follow.
This isn't about partisan politics. It is about learning from what happened so future Americans are less likely to be harmed by decisions they never had the information to understand.
Americans are constantly told we are responsible for assessing risk and making informed decisions. We are expected to follow rules, protect our children, and accept the consequences of our choices.
But informed decisions require information.
You cannot responsibly respond to a public-safety risk you have not been given the facts to understand.
Government understands this principle when dealing with private citizens and businesses. Companies must disclose material information. Products carry warnings. Financial institutions have reporting obligations. Employers must identify workplace hazards.
The reasoning is simple: people cannot make good decisions without the facts.
So why should government be held to a lesser standard?
When government changes enforcement policies, removes safeguards, restricts information sharing or otherwise changes the environment in which Americans live, citizens deserve to know what changed, why it changed and what consequences policymakers anticipated.
This is not a demand that government guarantees public safety.
It is a demand that government gives citizens the information necessary to make their own decisions, and the necessary adjustments to protect themselves and their families.
If families have the facts about changing risks, they can make different choices. They can change where they live, where their children go, how they travel, or what precautions they take.
We cannot eliminate every risk. But if government gives us the truth about the risks it knows about, we can make the necessary adjustments to minimize them.
And this is where the language of "stigmatization" can become dangerous. Concerns about prejudice may be legitimate, but they cannot become a justification for withholding material facts.
If a statistic is true, the answer is context, not concealment.
If a policy creates a measurable risk, the answer is mitigation, not silence.
If a victim's experience complicates a preferred narrative, the answer should be accountability, not making the victim disappear from the conversation.
The Biden administration provides a clear example.
Americans were repeatedly assured that the southern border was secure and that many concerns being raised were exaggerated or politically motivated. Yet the consequences were visible: unprecedented encounters, overwhelmed systems, and growing questions about who was entering the country, how effectively people were being identified and vetted, and what risks followed.
The problem wasn't simply that the administration made policy choices with which people disagreed.
Americans were not given a candid accounting of the risks and consequences associated with those choices.
Illinois presents another version of the same problem.
Illinois leaders adopted policies limiting cooperation between state and local authorities and federal immigration enforcement. Those policies were defended as compassionate or necessary. But compassion does not eliminate the responsibility to explain the consequences.
What information was considered?
What risks were identified?
What safeguards were put in place?
What happened after those safeguards were weakened?
And were Illinois families given enough information to understand the public-safety environment those policies created?
Those aren't merely political questions. They are accountability questions.
For me, this isn't theoretical.
On January 19, 2025, my daughter Katie was killed in Urbana, Illinois. She was 20 years old, sitting in the back seat of a car stopped at a red light when an intoxicated driver traveling nearly 80 miles per hour slammed into it. Another young woman died. Three others were seriously injured.
My family cannot go back and change what happened that night.
But it forces me to ask a question every government leader should be willing to answer:
If we had been given the complete truth about the risks created by the policies being implemented around us, could we have made different choices for our children that might have reduced those risks?
We will never know.
And that is precisely the point.
Families should not have to discover the consequences of government policy after someone they love is dead.
Give people the facts before tragedy, not explanations afterward.
Learning from what happened isn't about assigning blame for every individual tragedy. It is about making sure the next family has the information necessary to make a different decision.
Not telling Americans what to think. Giving Americans enough truth to think for themselves, make the necessary adjustments and protect their families.
Government has every right to make policy within the law. But when leaders change how laws are enforced, weaken safeguards or depart from established policy, they owe the public an honest explanation.
Tell us what changed.
Tell us why.
Tell us what laws or safeguards are affected.
Tell us what risks you identified.
Tell us what the consequences have been.
Then let us decide how to respond.
Because government doesn't have to make every decision for us.
It owes us the truth necessary to make our own decisions, and the opportunity to make the adjustments necessary to protect the people we love.