Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported on Wednesday a "disturbing trend of illegal aliens driving 18 wheelers" after two deadly crashes in one week -- one on I-10 in San Bernardino County in California, and one on U.S. 20 in Indiana -- involving drivers it said were in the country illegally.
Jashanpreet Singh, 21, failed to stop in traffic and plowed into a line of cars, causing a chain-reaction crash that killed three and injured several others on I-10 in Ontario, California, on Tuesday, according to local news.
A week earlier on October 15, driver Borko Stankovic, "was operating a semi-truck without a valid commercial license, when he swerved into oncoming traffic and hit a Subaru Crosstrek," and killing its driver on U.S. 20 in Indiana, according to a Department of Homeland Security release. Stankovic had his own authority as Eclipse Trucking Inc, which has since been placed out-of-service.
[Related: Six states issuing CDLs 'not consistent with federal regulations': What's going on]
Both Singh and Stankovic were in the country illegally, according to DHS.
Singh "first entered the U.S. in 2022 through the southern border and was RELEASED into the country under the Biden administration," DHS said.
Stankovic "has been in the United States illegally since February 2011, when his nonimmigrant visa status expired," DHS wrote.
"These tragedies follow a disturbing pattern of criminal illegal aliens driving commercial vehicles on American roads, directly threatening public safety," DHS's release continued, linking to past press coverage of an immigration raid on I-40 in Oklahoma that led to 90 "illegal alien" CMV drivers being arrested.
“It is a terrible tragedy three innocent people lost their lives due to the reckless open border policies that allowed an illegal alien to be released into the U.S. and drive an 18-wheeler on America’s highways,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in the DHS release about Singh.
DHS lodged arrest detainers for both drivers and has vowed to help DOT "prevent illegal alien" drivers from operating trucks.
DOT itself recently published an emergency rulemaking that aims to remove nearly 200,000 foreign CDL holders from truck driving work by changing the renewal criteria for non-domiciled CDLs.
DOT has come under fire for the rulemaking with teachers and government workers suing to "promptly" halt the rule. Those groups said the "new rule prevents immigrants who are lawfully present in the country and authorized to work from supporting themselves and their families" without citing empirical evidence showing drivers not domiciled in the U.S. have worse safety records.
The unions accuse DOT of advancing the rule "solely because of the prejudices of the Trump administration."
FMCSA, in the text of the rule, stated: "There is not sufficient evidence, derived from well-designed, rigorous, quantitative analyses, to reliably demonstrate a measurable empirical relationship between the nation of domicile for a CDL driver and safety outcomes in the United States such as changes in frequency and/or severity of crashes or changes in frequency of violations."
However, the rulemaking cites five deadly crashes by non-domiciled drivers in 2025, as well as national security concerns, in justifying the ban.
CDL applicants who recently arrived in the U.S. don't have to submit three years worth of driving records, and people that crossed the border undetected and then surrendered to Border Patrol, as Singh did, don't undergo background checks and the same level of vetting that Visa-holders do.
DHS has also offered an explanation to Overdrive on how exactly illegal aliens get CDLs.
