The Department of Transportation (DOT) has directly attributed the deaths of three people in a recent California highway accident to the state’s failure to comply with federal directives regarding Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) for illegal migrants.
According to a breaking DOT investigation, 21-year-old Jashanpreet Singh, an Indian national living unlawfully in the U.S., was able to keep and even upgrade his non-domiciled CDL just days before allegedly causing a multi-vehicle accident on October 21st in San Bernardino County, which killed three and injured two.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated the tragedy “would have never happened if [Democratic California Gov.] Gavin Newsom had followed our new rules,” adding that “California broke the law and now three people are dead.”
The DOT had issued a large-scale crackdown on non-domiciled drivers on September 26th, ordering California to pause the issuance of these CDLs and apply stricter standards to renewals, transfers, and upgrades—rules that would have deemed Singh, who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022, ineligible due to his status as an asylum seeker.
However, the investigation found that California failed to apply these new standards, allowing Singh to upgrade his license on October 15th by removing an in-state operation restriction.
The DOT report explicitly states the USDOT’s emergency rule “was issued to explicitly prevent drivers like Singh from getting behind the wheel of commercial motor vehicles.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer request for Singh, who was allegedly under the influence of drugs at the time of the crash.
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