Interstate 10 in San Bernardino County looked like a war zone last October. Eight vehicles crumpled together. Three people never made it home. And at the center of the wreckage sat a semi-truck driver who, according to dashcam footage, never touched his brakes.
That driver, 21-year-old Indian national Jashanpreet Singh, learned his fate this week. A California court sentenced him to four years and eight months behind bars after he pleaded guilty to three felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.
For a growing chorus of federal officials, that number landed like an insult.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy fired off a blistering response, framing the case as proof of a broken system rather than an isolated tragedy. He vowed his department would target every illegal immigrant trucker on American roads.
“5 years is a slap on the wrist for KILLING 3 AMERICANS,” Duffy said. “If California followed the rules, illegal aliens like Jashanpreet Singh wouldn’t be driving 80,000 pound missiles down our roads We won’t stop until ALL illegal truckers are put out of business and held accountable.”
The Department of Homeland Security went further, casting Singh not merely as a defendant but as a continuing threat once he walks free.
“Despite taking the lives of 3 people in a horrific eight-vehicle crash, criminal illegal alien Jashanpreet Singh was given a SLAP ON THE WRIST prison sentence of less than 5 years in sanctuary California,” the agency said. “Illegal aliens like this killer should NEVER be allowed behind the wheel or on our nation’s roads. ICE stands ready to arrest Singh upon his release so he is never allowed back on our roads to take another innocent life.”
Senator Mike Lee of Utah added his voice to the backlash, questioning whether the punishment fit the scale of the loss.
“This is a wildly insufficient punishment for a foreign national, in our country illegally, who killed 3 people with a truck,” Lee said.
Singh’s presence in the country traces back to March 2022, when he crossed the border illegally at California’s El Centro Sector.
Federal sources say the Biden administration released him into the interior of the country while his immigration case awaited a hearing — a hearing that, by the time of the crash, still had not resolved his status.
Somewhere between that border crossing and last October’s collision, Singh acquired something federal officials say he never should have had: a commercial driver’s license. California issued it to him in June 2025, according to the Department of Transportation.
That license has become its own flashpoint.
Federal regulators had already warned California about lapses in how the state vetted commercial license applicants, instructing officials to pause issuing new licenses to non-citizens and to audit licenses already on the books.
Reporting has since indicated Singh should have been barred from receiving his license under an emergency federal policy. California’s response was that his paperwork, including federally issued employment authorization documents, checked out.
The fallout from Singh’s case has rippled well beyond the courtroom, landing squarely in the middle of California’s race for governor.
An April debate among candidates hoping to lead the state exposed a sharp partisan divide over how aggressively officials should screen commercial drivers.
At issue: a Trump administration push for roadside English proficiency testing of truckers, a policy several Democratic candidates rejected outright.
Billionaire donor and Democratic candidate Tom Steyer was blunt in his opposition, warning the policy would open the door to discrimination.
“Racial profiling is illegal. And, in fact, picking on people based on the color of their skin in the state of California, is illegal,” Steyer said when pressed on whether he’d support roadside language testing for truckers.
Former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra took aim at a specific incident shown during the debate — a clip of an officer testing a Spanish-speaking driver’s ability to read road signs.
“Is that officer asking everyone he pulls over to explain those road signs? Or, is he asking only people who look like me? If he’s doing that, then he’s violating the law,” Becerra said.
Not every candidate on stage agreed. Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican who was later eliminated after failing to advance past the state’s nonpartisan June primary, dismissed the discrimination argument entirely.
“Let’s stop with this whole racism thing, and racial profiling and all of this garbage. We have to get over this. You either violated the law or you didn’t. End of story,” Bianco said. “Consequences for bad behavior.”
For now, Singh remains behind bars. Federal immigration authorities say they are prepared to move the moment his state sentence ends, ensuring, they say, that he will not return to the nation’s highways.
