How Illegal Immigrant Truck Drivers Ended Up On America’s Roads

Just a few years after waltzing across the border illegally, Indian national Harjinder Singh allegedly killed three people while making an illegal U-turn on a Florida turnpike as he sat behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler in August.

Singh came into the country in 2018 and was handed a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) in Washington in 2023, according to the Department of Transportation. He received his license despite having “failed his written exam 10 times, and he took his behind-the-wheel training course at a private CDL school in Washington,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier recently revealed as part of his ongoing investigation into California’s issuance of trucking licenses to illegal immigrants.

Singh also failed an English language proficiency test in the aftermath of the fatal collision, “providing correct responses to just 2 of 12 verbal questions and only accurately identifying 1 of 4 highway traffic signs,” according to the Department of Transportation.

The incident brought national attention to a string of crashes involving illegal immigrant drivers, some of whom barely speak English. The Trump administration has pledged to crack down on these drivers, but Americans have been left wondering: how does this keep happening?

Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now.

Trucking industry experts told The Daily Wire that while federal law requires that the road testing needed to obtain a CDL has to be done in English, the regulation is often not enforced. The written portion of the testing is offered in many languages in some states.

“There’s no good checks and balances to be perfectly honest with you,” Lewie Pugh, Executive Vice President of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said.

“A lot of states allow third party testing to do the CDLs and I would say that’s how most of these people get through,” he said.

“These people should’ve never gotten a license in the first place,” Pugh said.

The Trump administration has already taken steps to ensure the pattern of crashes stops.

“Until Trump said we’re gonna enforce it … no one was taking that seriously, there was no enforcement there, there was no audit there,” said John Esparza, president and CEO of the Texas Trucking Association.

Non-domiciled CDLs were introduced in 2019 to allow truck drivers to work out of their home states while the industry faced a need for drivers with a high turnover rate, Pugh said.

“Unfortunately, it’s opened the floodgates to allow all these folks to come in from all over the world and get CDLs very easily,” Pugh said.”This mess has just gotten bigger and bigger.”

California then granted Singh a non-domiciled CDL in 2024, allowing him to work across state lines. The California State Transportation Agency, however, defends that Singh was “entitled to receive” his CDL “given the federal government’s confirmation of his legal status,” according to ABC7.

“It all comes down to cheap labor, they want the cheapest people behind the wheel and unfortunately by doing that … what we are getting now is carnage on the highway,” Pugh said.

The alleged semi-truck driver who killed three people while making a U-turn at an “Official Use Only” turn on the Florida Turnpike is an ILLEGAL MIGRANT who was granted a commercial driver’s license by the State of California.
pic.twitter.com/Ky7w9hsojX

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 17, 2025

Indian national Jashanpreet Singh, 21, crossed into the United States illegally in 2022 and received his work permit the next year, which allowed him to obtain a commercial driver’s license in California in 2024, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Illegal immigrants can apply for a work permit 180 days after they apply for asylum. Their asylum claims don’t have to be granted or denied in order to have received work authorization, even if they crossed into the United States illegally.

Earlier this month, while driving a semi-truck on an Ontario, California, freeway, Jashanpreet allegedly caused a multi-car pile up that killed Pomona High Red Devils assistant basketball coach Clarence Nelson, his wife, Lisa, along with another unidentified victim, according to ABC7. Jashanpreet was allegedly under the influence of an unnamed drug when the crash occurred.

The crash left six-year-old Dalilah Coleman in a coma for three weeks, according to Homeland Security. When Coleman awoke, she was unable to walk, talk, eat orally.

While hospitalized for six months, Coleman underwent a craniectomy, which left her without half of her skill for four months. She also had a broken femur, skull fractures and now has diplegic cerebral palsy, global developmental delay, and will need therapy for the rest of her life.

Coleman’s stepfather was also hospitalized for critical injuries, along with several others.

Dalilah’s father, Marcus Coleman, a truck driver himself, has called for more industry regulations and enhanced punishments on trucking companies that hire illegal immigrants since the collision.

“There’s a lot that we’ve been robbed of and United States citizens are getting robbed of it everyday and these car accidents are behind it, these trucking accidents,” Marcus Coleman said on Newsmax Monday. “And there are easy fixes, it’s not difficult to fix this, it’s super easy. There’s laws that can be put into place, there’s regulations that can be put into place, a lot of these truck drivers that are operating illegally … the trucks need to be seized. The trucking companies need to understand that the United States isn’t gonna play around.”

“They need to take the truck away … for 30 days, they need to be fined, the broker for hiring them needs to be fined, everybody needs to be held accountable for this,” he said.

The Trump administration has already taken steps to stop illegal immigrants from obtaining CDLs, including by requiring English proficiency, launching an audit of states issuing non-domiciled CDLs. The worst offender is California, where more than 25% of non-domiciled CDLs reviewed by the feds were improperly issued, according to the Department of Transportation.

“California’s reckless disregard is frankly disgusting and an affront to the millions of Americans who expect us to keep them safe,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

“California must get its act together immediately or I will not hesitate to pull millions in funding. To every other state around the country – find all improperly issued CDLs and revoke their licenses now. We owe it to the American people to ensure only lawful, qualified drivers are operating big rigs on our highways,” Duffy added.

Duffy gave California 30 days to stop issuing CDLs to illegal immigrants, threatening to withhold nearly $160 million in the first year and doubling it the next if Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom fails to comply.

Newsom’s office defended that California CDL holders have a lower fatal crash rate than the national average.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently limited the issuance of non-domiciled CDLs to foreigners, only if they possess either an H-2B, H-2A or E-2 visa.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also targeted illegal immigrant truckers as part of President Donald Trump’s historic mass deportation campaign, arresting 91 of them in a recent operation along I-40 in Oklahoma.