License to kill: The nationwide scam turning America's highways into death traps

By now we've all seen the video. An Indian man driving an 18-wheeler on the Florida Turnpike attempts an illegal U-turn, carelessly pulling his rig across two lanes of traffic. A minivan traveling at highway speed crashes into the trailer, killing all three of its occupants.

The horrific August 12 accident has dominated headlines and social media for the past week and seems to have struck a very raw nerve in Americans across the country.

It’s about stopping a system that endangers the public, destroys good jobs, and shows open contempt for the skill and sacrifice of America’s truckers.

Hardest to forget is the face of the driver, one Harjinder Singh. Thanks to driver-facing camera footage obtained and released by the trucking industry YouTube channel "Bonehead Truckers," we can watch Singh up close as he makes his fatal decision.

It's shocking to observe that Singh fails to check for oncoming traffic before executing his dangerous maneuver. More shocking still is the utter lack of emotion he displays in the seconds after the minivan has plowed into his trailer.

Even once he exits his cab and surveys the carnage, Singh remains unnervingly expressionless. In a widely circulated photo of Singh standing outside his truck and staring into the camera, he appears to show no remorse or emotion of any kind. In fact, he looks almost defiant.

License to kill

A careless — and seemingly uncaring — illegal immigrant worker destroying the lives of three Americans. The incident immediately went viral. The facts of the case, once they emerged, only added fuel to the fire.

While Singh was driving under a California-issued commercial driver's license, he was in the United States illegally, crossing from Mexico back in 2018. Washington state illegally issued him a CDL first, which California unquestioningly honored when Singh went to work for a company based there. Republicans and Democrats quickly began to fight over who should take the blame for Singh remaining in America.

According to California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), his state may have issued Singh a "limited-term, non-domiciled" CDL in 2024, but it was the Trump administration that allowed him to stay in America in the first place.

Department of Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin countered that the first Trump administration rejected Singh's work authorization in 2020, only to have President Biden grant it in 2021. A spokesman for Newsom then retorted that Singh's work permit was renewed this April.

For his part, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) placed the blame squarely on Newsom and his state's sanctuary policies.

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Blame to spare

But DeSantis is as much to blame for the highways of America becoming death traps as is Newsom, or a number of other governors. Picking on Newsom or DeSantis misses the point, although they could be doing more to clean up their respective state DOTs and DMVs.

Gavin Newsom’s DMV and DOT in California have been egregious on this issue and remain defiant in enforcing President Trump’s executive order on enforcing English language proficiency.

Research by American Truckers United shows that these two states are among at least 10 that, after President Biden’s 2021 “Trucking Task Force,” issued an unusually high number of “limited-term” or “non-domicile” CDLs to recent arrivals — many with questionable work credentials or, like Harjinder Singh, through sob stories designed to avoid deportation.

Florida, in particular, has seen a major CDL bribery scheme, in which hundreds of licenses were sold for cash without exams or skill tests. The state also harbors a cottage industry of substandard trucking schools. One graduate, Jean Marie St. Lot, a recent immigrant from Haiti, admitted after a deadly 2021 Texas crash that his three-week course had taught him nothing about winter driving.

No English, no problem

California has its own network of poor-quality schools, some even offering classes in Punjabi, despite the federal requirement that commercial drivers be proficient in English. That’s why President Trump’s April executive order reinstating the English language proficiency rule was so significant.

Since June, the DOT has sidelined 1,500 illiterate drivers, according to Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. But with over 400,000 new CDLs issued in the year after Biden’s task force — many to drivers who couldn’t meet basic standards — removing 1,500 is barely a start. Singh himself was pulled over in New Mexico just weeks before his fatal Florida crash.

It was not until after the fatal crash that Singh's command of English was put to the test. According to the DOT, Singh "failed the [ELP] assessment, providing correct responses to just two of 12 verbal questions and only accurately identifying one of 4 highway traffic signs."

'Shortage' scam

This outrage goes beyond one illegal alien with a fraudulent CDL. The entire industry is being hollowed out by foreign drivers who lack training, language skills, and often legal status.

The American Trucking Association has fueled this crisis for decades, peddling the false narrative of a “driver shortage” to justify endless subsidies for CDL mills. Instead of raising pay to retain drivers, mega-carriers embraced turnover rates above 100%, cycling through cheap recruits while pocketing taxpayer money.

Today, that model is reinforced by NGOs and nonprofits aligned with Biden-era immigration policies.

Tax haul

Writing at her Substack, Highway Veritas, independent trucking industry researcher Danielle Chaffin notes that the system deliberately channels taxpayer dollars into programs for “fresh recruits” — immigrants, refugees, foster youth, and "justice-involved individuals" (what we used to call ex-convicts) — who qualify for federally funded workforce schemes. More recruits mean more subsidies, which keep the churn alive.

Who benefits? Recent arrivals often go to work for their fellow immigrants, who have built huge networks of small trucking companies by exploiting every available loophole.

Many haul freight for Amazon through its Relay subcontracting system, where pay is far lower than what American truckers once earned. The results are predictable: tragedies like the Austin crash this March, when Ethiopian driver Solomun Araya — licensed only four months — plowed into stopped traffic, killing five, including all four members of a young family with children, and injuring 12 others.

RELATED: Highway to hell: Mass influx of foreign-born truckers cause carnage on American roads

Gina Ferazzi/Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Off the hook

These small carriers are often “chameleon carriers,” changing names and registrations to dodge regulators, sometimes literally scribbling new numbers on taped-up paper signs. They collapse one LLC when violations pile up and reappear under another the next day, with the same trucks and the same drivers.

As Chaffin puts it in her excellent piece on chameleons, "The trucking industry remains one of the few places in America where a company can get shut down for killing someone … and be back in business tomorrow."

Transportation Secretary Duffy has opened an investigation into the flood of questionable CDLs. But focusing on drivers alone won’t solve the crisis. The real culprits are the companies — often foreign-owned — that exploit corrupt licensing systems, cut corners on training, and then feed cheap labor into supply chains for corporate giants like Amazon.

The truck stops here?

Americans are sick of watching their loved ones die on roads made dangerous by this racket. This isn’t about which governor governs worse or about empty grandstanding over immigration policy. It’s about stopping a system that endangers the public, destroys good jobs, and shows open contempt for the skill and sacrifice of America’s truckers.

As this essay was going to print, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took to X to signal how seriously the administration takes this problem:

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Welcome news for this trucker, and no doubt for many others. I thank Secretary Rubio for honoring the work of so many trucking advocates who have been discussing these issues for years now.

But be aware: Turning off the flow doesn’t do very much about the hundreds of thousands of ill-trained, often illiterate, and dubiously licensed replacement "truckers" who are already here.

We look forward to seeing Secretary Duffy work with presumptive new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration head Derek Barrs to remove these dangerous operators from our industry. They are a clear and present danger to the lives of American motorists, and they must be taken off the road for good.