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A 21-year-old semitruck driver has been accused of being under the influence of drugs and causing a fatal crash that killed three people on a southern roadway. California Freeway is in the country illegally, U.S. Homeland Security Officials said this on Thursday.
Jashanpreet Singh was arrested and sent to jail after an accident involving eight vehicles on Tuesday. OntarioCalifornia, in which four people were also injured.
The San Bernardino District Attorney’s Office said he faces three counts of aggravated driving while intoxicated resulting in death and three counts of aggravated driving while intoxicated causing injury.
Singh is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday. The district attorney’s office said he does not yet have an attorney.
Homeland Security said in a post on Twitter on Thursday that Singh, from Yuba City, California, is from India and had entered the US illegally across the southern border in 2022.
That revelation prompted Transport Secretary Sean Duffy to restate earlier concerns about who should be able to obtain a commercial driver’s license. Duffy and the President donald trump Since this fatal incident they have been pressing the issue and criticizing California Florida The crash in August was caused by an immigrant truck driver who the federal government says was in the country illegally.
The Transportation Department last month largely banned noncitizens from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses.
Westbound traffic on Interstate 10, about 26 miles (42 kilometers) west of San Bernardino, was slowed to a halt around 1 p.m. Tuesday when a tractor-trailer failed to stop, striking other vehicles and causing a chain-reaction crash, the California Highway Patrol said in a release.
Dashcam video of the tractor-trailer obtained by KABC-TV shows the truck colliding with a small, white SUV in the center lane of the freeway. It continued moving forward, hitting several other vehicles including another truck. It crossed two lanes before colliding with an already disabled truck on the right shoulder of the freeway.
As the tractor-trailer crossed the two right lanes, flames could be seen shooting from it.
California Highway Patrol Officer Rodrigo Jimenez says the agency has viewed the KABC video and believes it is dashcam video of the truck that caused the crash.
“This tragedy follows a troubling pattern of criminal illegal aliens driving commercial vehicles on American roads, which directly endangers public safety,” Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday.
fatal accident in florida
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 hit by a minivan. Two passengers in the minivan died at the scene and the driver died at the hospital.
Homeland Security said the truck driver, Harjinder Singh, was in the United States illegally. Florida officials said he entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2018.
Homeland Security said Harjinder Singh obtained a commercial driver’s license in California, which is one of 19 states other than the District of Columbia that issue licenses regardless of immigration status, according to the National Immigration Law Center.
The Trump administration has pointed to the Florida crash in debate with California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.
In April, Trump issued an executive order mandating that truck drivers who do not read and speak the English language would be considered ineligible for service.
“A driver who can’t understand English will not drive a commercial vehicle in this country. Period,” Duffy said the next month.
Under new Transportation Department rules imposed last month, only non-citizen drivers who have three specific visas are allowed to qualify for a commercial license. And states will require you to verify your immigration status. Only drivers holding H-2a, H-2B or E-2 visas will qualify. H-2B is for temporary non-agricultural workers, while H-2a is for agricultural workers. E-2 is for people who make a substantial investment in a US business
The licenses will be valid only for one year unless the applicant’s visa expires before that.
On Thursday, Duffy called the California crash “disgraceful” in a social media post.
“This is why I have introduced new restrictions that prevent illegal immigrants from driving trucks,” he wrote on Twitter.
Activists see bias against immigrant drivers
Bhupinder Kaur, director of operations for United Sikhs, said the New York-based humanitarian relief nonprofit is concerned about growing prejudice against immigrant drivers.
It was not immediately clear Thursday afternoon whether Jashanpreet Singh is a Sikh.
“Law enforcement and hasty social media posts continue to rush to highlight names, photographs and immigration status, while hiding the same details about non-immigrant drivers,” Kaur told The Associated Press in an email Thursday. “Discretion officials elsewhere cite ‘privacy’ that vanishes when driver immigrates.”
Nearly one in five long-haul drivers are immigrant truck drivers, Kaur added, adding that the majority are fully licensed and law-abiding.
“Yet they face unequal scrutiny and coverage,” Kaur said. “Selective transparency distorts public understanding and may even influence legal outcomes.”
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Associated Press writer Luis Andres Henao contributed from Princeton, New Jersey.