The new year and the incoming administration have brought us exciting opportunities for a rebirth of American freedom and opportunity for all. Several tragic events from the past few years, however, serve as a reminder of the grave threats to safety and security in this country that President-elect Donald Trump must confront in the coming months.

The outgoing administration has done a disservice to America. I’m thinking of Tammy Nobles and her 20-year-old daughter, Kayla Hamilton. In 2022, Kayla, a Maryland resident, was brutally raped, strangled with a phone cord and murdered in Harford County by MS-13 gang member and four-time murderer Walter Javier Martinez. The murderer illegally entered the United States and was apprehended by Border Patrol four months before the crime, but the Biden administration instead of facilitating his removal sent him to live with a sponsor in Maryland.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland and the Department of Justice can and must do more to secure our safety here in the Old Line State. Proactive efforts to fight crime and violence can reap enormous benefits — just look at Baltimore City under State’s Attorney Ivan Bates. The number of annual murders in the city has fallen from 344 in 2015 to just over 200 last year.

A strong U.S. attorney here in Maryland can help cut those numbers, and Maryland’s murder and violent crime rate, down even further. We need our federal law enforcement and prosecutors empowered to preserve public safety so that our families can live and remain here in Maryland in greater peace and prosperity. We will then be in a position to better bless our state, our country and our own families, and then the world, with our ingenuity, wealth and innovation.

Instead of focusing the highest offices of law enforcement in Maryland on the task at hand of securing our safety and ensuring the rights of all Marylanders, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown has announced he plans to continue the radical lawfare of the Biden administration, pledging to prepare for litigation against the Trump administration. While Gov. Wes Moore acknowledged the “tens of millions of Americans” who voted for Trump and JD Vance and said he’d seek common ground with President Trump, Brown, our top law enforcement official in Maryland, promised instead to sue the Trump White House.

Brown’s announcement that he will create a special team to take on the Trump administration shows he has a divisive agenda to use our money to mobilize his office to fight the incoming administration with lawsuits — the kind of “lawfare” that we have all had to endure under the Biden administration. Brown’s values are not Maryland’s values.

Not only does Brown’s rhetoric not unify, it shows little regard for our communities that would be protected by the very policies the Trump administration will pursue such as increased immigration enforcement that Brown would likely challenge.

Sadly, Brown’s radical pledge has now been echoed by several mayors of sanctuary cities in Maryland, including our own here in Frederick. These mayors and the attorney general should instead follow the law.

We need a strong U.S. attorney in Maryland and Department of Justice leadership willing to counter such open-borders policies with an aggressive prosecutorial plan, one that will ensure the rights of all Marylanders while giving no quarter to the violent criminals, cartel members and people who entered the country illegally under the Biden administration.

We need leadership that upholds the Constitution and our laws.

Let’s rededicate ourselves as Marylanders to the constitutionally guaranteed rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have the right to live, work and retire here without the threat of MS-13 gang members on our streets and our tax dollars paying to house those who cross the border illegally, all while our families struggle financially.

To millions of Maryland voters who want this bright future, let’s make Maryland safe again for everyone.

Dan Cox is a former Maryland state delegate and was the 2022 Republican nominee for governor of Maryland.