Ten times in 2023, Harjinder Singh took the written test to obtain his commercial truck driver's license and ten times the India-born 28-year-old failed. Finally, after two months of attempts, he passed. But two years later, Singh would make a mistake that didn't allow for ten - or even two - chances. While driving an 18-wheel truck through east-central Florida in August 2025, Singh attempted to make an illegal U-turn through a gap in a highway divider marked 'Official Use Only,' putting his tractor-trailer directly in the path of a minivan. Three men in the van were killed. Singh was arrested and charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of manslaughter. He has pleaded not guilty.
For the families of the victims, it was agony heaped on agony to learn that Singh had not only failed multiple written and practical tests, but that he had come to the United States illegally. He crossed from Mexico in 2018 and received an Employment Authorization Document (EAD), which allows non-citizens to work in the US. What's more, after the Florida crash, investigators with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said Singh failed his English proficiency tests, answering just two of 12 verbal questions correctly and he could only correctly identify one of four traffic signs. Regardless, he had been given a commercial license by Washington state in July 2023 and another just a year later by California. And while the case is shocking, it's not isolated.
'There's so much illegal behavior and so little enforcement that it's now just the Wild West,' said Steve Viscelli, a University of Pennsylvania professor and qualified truck driver, who was tapped to join a 2022 Biden White House task force on trucking. On October 21, another Indian national, 21-year-old Jashanpreet Singh's 18-wheel truck plowed into four cars in Ontario, California, killing three and injuring four. He was charged with three counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and reckless driving. Jashanpreet Singh has pleaded not guilty. And he, too, crossed illegally into the US from Mexico in 2022 and obtained his EAD upon claiming asylum, authorities said. Then this fall, officials in Oklahoma, a vital crossroads for long-distance haulage, carried out a series of stoppages along their highways and found at least a fifth of the truck drivers they questioned had entered the country illegally.
In late September, Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, said that 520 vehicles had been pulled over, and 91 of the truck drivers - almost 25 percent - were using 'fraudulent licenses.' A second check, at the end of October, found 34 out of 209 truckers were neither citizens, residents nor visa holders. Now a Daily Mail investigation has revealed widespread alarm among truckers and industry experts about the increasing carnage on America's roads, which they say is caused largely by inexperienced, unqualified drivers - some of whom are in the country illegally. The Trump administration is trying to change that. Sean Duffy, Trump's secretary of transport, sees himself as a new sheriff in town. Many would argue he couldn't arrive a moment too soon.
Fatal highway truck accidents have steadily increased over the past decade, according to the latest statistics released by the National Highway Safety Administration. But the most pronounced year-to-year spike in deaths occurred between 2020 and 2021, when the number of people killed in traffic crashes involving large trucks shot up 16 percent - from 4,945 to 5,821. The next year was even worse: 5,969 were killed in 2022, a nearly 20 percent increase from 2020. In 2023, fatalities dipped slightly but still remained ten percent above 2020. These alarming increases may be coincidental and are presumably influenced by many factors, but they do coincide with a Biden administration initiative to speed through the processing of commercial driver's licenses.
In 2021, the Biden administration urged states to find ways to approve more licenses, as the country grappled with COVID-era logistics challenges that snared the nation's supply chains. From February 2022 onwards, driving training and test centers were allowed to self-certify their own programs, meaning with no state or federal oversight. There are now over 32,000 self-registered 'training providers' listed in the federal registry. Biden's reforms also led to states massively expanding the issuance of non-domicile CDLs, granting them to many who had an EAD, even if they had entered the country illegally. This came hot on the heels of the watering down of English language requirements: previously drivers who could not converse in English with a police officer or official could have their license revoked. Obama-era rules from 2015 had rescinded that order.
Applicants can now take their written test for the CDL in almost any language: Virginia currently offers tests in 26 including the West African dialect Twi Nepali Pashto and Haitian Creole. Anyone wanting to drive should in theory be able to read road signs and converse with traffic officials. In practice industry insiders told the Daily Mail enforcement is sparse. Raman Dhillon CEO of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association said that he warned during a 2022 Biden White House meeting that there was insufficient oversight of new drivers and haulage companies and told the assembled officials that 'this is going to be a crisis coming in.' Dhillon told industry website Overdrive: 'A person crossing the border with no experience or nothing gets a work permit in two months，and within one month gets their CDL. Well，they never even drove a car in this country，so why are we doing this？This is not even an issue for the trucking industry。这是一项国家安全问题。'
Shannon Everett，head of Arkansas-based American Truckers United，told the Daily Mail he had 'evidence of guys who were issued EAD cards，and then，five days later，were issued CDLs.' Everett pointed the finger at unions representing large haulage companies，which have for decades claimed that there was a nationwide driver shortage。但其他观察人士认为，问题不在于卡车司机短缺，而在于留任率：超过90%的司机在第一年内辞职。'他们的工资低，待遇差，远离家乡，培训不足，基本上被当作肉饼一样处理，他们辞职了，'戈德·马吉尔（Gord Magill）说，他是一名卡车司机和分析师，其Substack《自动驾驶卡车监测行业》监测该行业。无论如何，拜登团队放宽限制的影响立竿见影。
2022年4月，白宫自夸其推动更多人进入这一职业的努力已使2021年1月至2022年4月间发放的CDL达876000个——是通常数量的两倍多。'我们现在看到的是他们所做工作的成果，'纳什维尔的一位分析师丹妮尔·查芬（Danielle Chaffin）说。'而且这很糟糕。'加利福尼亚州拥有美国最大的集装箱港口和庞大的移民人口，一直被特朗普政府视为一个问题。这个问题无疑是政治性的——唐纳德·特朗普总统及其团队正在对加州州长加文·纽瑟姆采取强硬措施——但它也无疑是真实的。
'I've done a lot of work in California on these issues, and the state does have some work to do to enforce some of its own laws,' said Viscelli, the Pennsylvania-based professor, who worked on Congressional and Californian task forces investigating the situation. 'The problems are complicated but they're certainly there.' Duffy announced on October 26 he was withholding $160 million in federal funds for California, after the state refused to stop issuing CDLs to non-residents and refused to review the 60,000 licenses it had granted. Duffy had previously pulled $40 million from the state for failing to enforce English proficiency tests. He further threatened to prevent California from handing out any new CDLs. On Wednesday, California revoked 17,000 non-domiciled commercial drivers' licenses.
'After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong，Gavin Newsom和California已经被当场抓住。'Duffy上周表示。'这只是冰山一角。我的团队将继续迫使California证明他们已将每一位非法移民从半挂车和校车后面移除。'ColeStevens是家族拥有的StevensTrucking公司的三兄弟中最小的一位，他告诉DailyMail，像他这样的合法经营者正被完全挤出行业。'那些经营我们业务已有30、40、50年的安全美国承运人——我们从未见过过去三年中价格压制如此严重的情况，'Stevens说。'当你有潜在的不法分子愿意去获取非法执照时，他们还在做什么呢？'
他停顿了一下，喘了口气。在他的小型货车驾驶座上，靠近他们业务运营的俄克拉荷马城仓库，Stevens目睹一名驾驶亚马逊货物的18轮卡车司机闯过“仅限汽车”标志，冒着任何途经机动车生命危险。“情况越来越糟，”他说。“如果我的司机这样做，当局就会找上我：他们知道我住在哪里，他们知道我的生意。但是很多这些公司在出现问题时就消失了。没有问责制。‘他们甚至不会看到新闻上爆炸的五口之家的车祸，因为他们在另一个国家。他们只是在数钱，同时削弱这个行业。’”