A fatal Mississippi highway crash is raising a question that should be impossible to ignore: How was an illegal immigrant who had been monitored by federal immigration authorities able to end up behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound commercial truck?
Sube Singh, an Indian national who immigration authorities encountered in 2017, is accused of fatally striking 36-year-old Dedric Garrett on I-20 in Hinds County, Mississippi, Thursday.
According to WLBT 3, Singh was driving a 2021 Freightliner when he allegedly struck Garrett as Garrett was getting out of his 2016 Honda CR-V. First responders pronounced Garrett dead at the scene. Singh was not injured.
But the circumstances surrounding Singh's immigration history make the tragedy even more troubling.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesman told The Daily Wire that Border Patrol agents encountered Singh on November 19, 2017. He was subsequently placed in ICE custody before being released on bond on May 10, 2018.
After his release, ICE enrolled Singh in its Alternatives to Detention program, which allowed authorities to monitor him with a GPS tracking device.
ICE's monitoring technology can include ankle bracelets and wrist-worn devices.
So while Singh was being tracked by federal immigration authorities, he was ultimately operating a massive commercial truck on an American interstate.
Now a man is dead.
Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, did not mince words when addressing the crash and a string of other deadly collisions involving illegal immigrant truck drivers.
" If you are in our country illegally or can’t speak and understand English, you have no business operating an 80,000-pound semi-truck," Nehls wrote on X. "It's common sense."
That last part should not be controversial.
Driving a commercial vehicle is not comparable to getting behind the wheel of a family sedan. An 18-wheeler can weigh tens of thousands of pounds, requires specialized training and demands the ability to understand road signs, instructions and emergency situations quickly.
When the driver cannot meet those basic requirements, everyone on the road is put at risk.
The Trump administration has responded to a growing number of crashes involving illegal immigrant truckers with a broader effort to remove unqualified foreign drivers from American roads.
Among the changes is stricter enforcement of English-language requirements for commercial driver's license applicants.
The administration has also launched an initiative aimed at helping American veterans move into the trucking industry. Veterans who have at least two years of experience safely operating heavy military vehicles will be able to bypass the traditional CDL training process, which can take roughly three to eight weeks and cost applicants thousands of dollars.
There is a straightforward principle behind the effort: American roads should be staffed by qualified drivers who can safely operate the vehicles they are entrusted with.
DHS says it is taking that responsibility seriously.
The department's spokesman said DHS "is aggressively working with its interagency partners to get illegal alien commercial drivers off the road."
Federal authorities have already begun making arrests at trucking weigh stations. During a three-day operation in July, authorities detained 21 illegal immigrant drivers who held non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses issued by California and New York, according to DHS.
The department has warned that allowing unqualified illegal immigrants to operate commercial vehicles presents a serious public-safety threat.
That concern is now impossible to discuss in the abstract for Garrett's family.
A 36-year-old man is dead after a crash involving an 18-wheeler. And the driver behind the wheel was someone federal immigration authorities had already encountered, detained and placed under GPS monitoring.
That raises serious questions about how Singh obtained the ability to operate a commercial vehicle, whether he met every applicable licensing and safety requirement, and whether existing enforcement systems failed somewhere along the way.
Those questions deserve answers.
Because immigration enforcement is not merely about paperwork or statistics. It is about knowing who is in the country, enforcing the law and making sure people entrusted with potentially lethal machinery are qualified to operate it.
Americans should not have to wonder whether the person driving an 80,000-pound truck beside them is legally present, properly licensed and capable of communicating in an emergency.
That's not radical.
It's common sense — and after another deadly crash, the Trump administration is making clear that common sense is coming back to America's roads.
