A 21-year-old semitruck driver accused of being under the influence of drugs and causing a fiery crash that killed three people on a southern California freeway is in the country illegally, U.S. Homeland Security officials said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Jashanpreet Singh was arrested and jailed after Tuesday\u2019s eight-vehicle crash in Ontario, California, that also left four people injured.<\/p>\n
He faces three counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and driving under the influence causing injury, the San Bernardino District Attorney’s office said.<\/p>\n
Singh is scheduled for arraignment Friday. The district attorney’s office said he does not yet have a lawyer.<\/p>\n
Singh, of Yuba City, California, is from India and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 across the southern border, Homeland Security said Thursday in a post on X.<\/p>\n
That revelation prompted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to restate earlier concerns about who should be able to obtain commercial driver\u2019s licenses. Duffy and President Donald Trump have been pressing the issue and criticizing California ever since a deadly Florida crash in August was caused by an immigrant truck driver the federal government says was in the country illegally.<\/p>\n
The Transportation Department significantly restricted when noncitizens can get commercial driver\u2019s licenses last month.<\/p>\n
California’s Highway Patrol said in a release that traffic westbound on Interstate 10, about 26 miles (42 kilometers) west of San Bernardino, had slowed about 1 p.m. Tuesday when a tractor-trailer failed to stop, struck other vehicles and caused a chain-reaction crash.<\/p>\n
Dashcam video from the tractor-trailer obtained by KABC-TV shows the truck slamming into what appears to be a small, white SUV in the freeway\u2019s center lane. It continued forward, plowing into several other vehicles, including another truck. It then crossed over two lanes before crashing into an already-disabled truck on the freeway\u2019s right shoulder.<\/p>\n
Flames can be seen erupting alongside the tractor-trailer as it crosses the two right lanes.<\/p>\n
California Highway Patrol Officer Rodrigo Jimenez says the agency has seen the KABC video and believes it is dashcam video from the truck that caused the crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis tragedy follows a disturbing pattern of criminal illegal aliens driving commercial vehicles on American roads, directly threatening public safety,\u201d Homeland Security said Thursday in its X post.<\/p>\n
Deadly crash in Florida<\/p>\n
In August, a truck driver made an illegal turn on Florida’s Turnpike, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of West Palm Beach, and was struck by a minivan. Two passengers in the minivan died at the scene, and the driver died at a hospital.<\/p>\n
Homeland Security has said that truck driver, Harjinder Singh, was in the United States illegally. Florida authorities said he entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2018.<\/p>\n
Homeland Security said Harjinder Singh obtained a commercial driver\u2019s license in California, which is one of 19 states, in addition to the District of Columbia, that issue licenses regardless of immigration status, according to the National Immigration Law Center.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has pointed to the Florida crash while sparring with California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n
In April, Trump issued an executive order saying truckers who don\u2019t read and speak the English language proficiently would be considered unfit for service.<\/p>\n
\u201cA driver who can\u2019t understand English will not drive a commercial vehicle in this country. Period,\u201d Duffy said the following month.<\/p>\n
Under the new Transportation Department rules imposed last month, only noncitizen drivers who have three specific visas are allowed to qualify for commercial licenses. And states will be required to verify their immigration status. Only drivers who hold either an H-2a, H-2B or E-2 visa will qualify. H-2B is for temporary nonagricultural workers, while H-2a is for agricultural workers. E-2 is for people who make substantial investments in a U.S. business<\/p>\n
The licenses will only be valid for up to one year unless the applicant\u2019s visa expires sooner than that.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Duffy called the California crash \u201coutrageous\u201d in a social media post.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is exactly why I set new restrictions that prohibit ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS from operating trucks,\u201d he wrote on X. \u201c@CAgovernor must join every other state in the U.S. in enforcing these new actions to prevent any more accidents and deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n
Activist sees bias against immigrant drivers<\/p>\n
Bhupinder Kaur, director of operations for UNITED SIKHS, said the New York-based humanitarian relief nonprofit, is alarmed by what it sees as growing bias involving immigrant drivers.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear Thursday afternoon if Jashanpreet Singh is Sikh.<\/p>\n
\u201cLaw enforcement and hasty social media posts constantly rush to name, photograph, and expose immigration status, while similar details about non-immigrant drivers remain withheld,\u201d Kaur told The Associated Press in an email Thursday. \u201cThe discretion officials cite as \u2018privacy\u2019 elsewhere seems to vanish when the driver is an immigrant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immigrant truckers make up nearly one in five long-haul drivers, Kaur continued, adding that most are fully licensed and law-abiding.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet they face unequal scrutiny and coverage,\u201d Kaur said. \u201cSelective transparency distorts public understanding and can even influence legal outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 21-year-old semitruck driver accused of being under the influence of drugs and causing a fiery crash that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3562,387,7,9,8,3563],"class_list":{"0":"post-20199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-ap-a-wire","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-california-headlines","12":"tag-california-news","13":"tag-wires-bot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}