The Alpine Border Patrol Station will mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks Friday at a memorial with a unique connection to both the attacks and the station’s own history.
The remembrance ceremony is scheduled for 9 a.m. Sept. 11 at the station’s permanent 9/11 memorial, which contains a 1,300-pound piece of steel recovered from the World Trade Center.
The anniversary holds particular significance for the Alpine station. On Sept. 11, 2001, Border Patrol agents and local officials had gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony for the new station when news arrived of the attacks on the East Coast.
The groundbreaking was halted, and agents were placed on heightened alert as the attacks dramatically changed the nation’s security posture.
A decade later, Border Patrol agents and community volunteers constructed a permanent memorial at the station honoring the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks and the first responders who answered the emergency.
The memorial was dedicated in 2011 and centers on a roughly 8-foot-by-6-foot section of World Trade Center steel weighing approximately 1,300 pounds.
Agents and community members applied to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to obtain the artifact from Ground Zero. Two Border Patrol agents later transported the steel from New York City to Alpine, where local law enforcement led a procession accompanying it to the station.
The Alpine station has held a remembrance ceremony at the memorial each Sept. 11 since its dedication. The annual observance brings together Border Patrol agents, law enforcement officers, firefighters and community members.
Friday’s ceremony will include a moment of silence, the lowering of the U.S. flag to half-staff and the laying of a wreath at the memorial.
This year’s observance marks both the 25th anniversary of the attacks and the 15th anniversary of the Alpine memorial’s dedication.
