A California father says Gov. Gavin Newsom has ignored his pleas for answers after an illegal immigrant truck driver caused what he says was a devastating crash that left his young daughter with life-altering injuries.”We never did receive anything nack from the governor. We never received a call back. We never received a ‘governor’s going to look into this.’ We didn’t receive anything,” Marcus Coleman told “America’s Newsroom” Thursday.
His daughter, Dalilah Coleman, was 5 years old at the time of the crash in Southern California last year. Coleman said a semitruck failed to stop and caused a multi-vehicle pileup. Dalilah was airlifted to a children’s hospital, where she stayed more than a month, much of it in a coma.
According to the report, the girl now suffers from a traumatic brain injury, can no longer walk, and takes her meals via a feeding tube. The truck driver in the case has been identified as an illegal from India. According to several reports, he obtained his CDL (Commercial Driver’s License) from the California DMV. I gather from several sources that the driver is now in ICE custody. This driver should not be confused with another man who obtained his CDL from the California DMV and, last month, attempted a U-turn on the Florida Pike, killing four.
When called upon to take action against these events, California Governor Newsom engaged in finger-pointing, making the ludicrous claim that the federal government is at fault.
In the interest of transparency, I’ll tell you that I’ve just recently retired from driving trucks; I acted as a driver trainer and mentor. I’ve seen many accidents, and I’ve even been involved with a few in my well over 1 million miles. Fortunately, none of them caused any injuries. That said, I can tell you that old hands in the business have been pointing out problems with this situation for years, and I have seen it myself. Look, even trained drivers with serious experience and good judgment can fall victim to accidents. The more miles you drive, the more likely these things are to happen. The thing is, when the emphasis in the issuing state is on “sanctuary,” it makes things far worse.
Over at The Daily Caller, Jason Hopkins writes:
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is restricting non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) to foreign nationals after a federal audit uncovered “catastrophic patterns” of states unlawfully issuing licenses to foreign truck drivers, according to a Friday announcement from Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy. Beginning immediately, non-citizens will not be given non-domiciled CDLs unless they meet a much stricter set of standards.
Duffy, announced this as an “emergency” action. I believe it’s a good move, whatever else is being done. However, given that states obsessed with “sanctuary” have demonstrably ignored laws on the subject—and that this disregard for the law has already resulted in injuries and fatalities far exceeding those caused by better-trained, more experienced drivers—one wonders what issuing new laws will accomplish. Will these new standards even be followed by “sanctuary” states?
Even assuming the states shift their “official” practices to comply with the federal requirements, what about the black market in CDLs? As an example, Overdrive Online reports:
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford on Friday announced the takedown of “an illegal alien driver’s license scheme” resulting in eight arrests and $120,000 in cash seized.
Ford said “hundreds, if not thousands” of driver’s licenses, both commercial and passenger, were fraudulently issued. Uthemeier indicated this investigation has set off a statewide search for other bad actors.
The Sheriff’s office said it noticed unusual activity at the local DMV office and on May 20 began an investigation alongside Homeland Security Investigations.
“Information was reported that two DMV employees were compromised and were being financially compensated to provide individuals with driver’s licenses, even though the individuals did not meet statutory requirements to lawfully obtain the license,” a release from the Sheriff’s office said.Florida does issue non-domiciled CDLs, or CDLs to non-citizens or U.S. citizens who live in other states. In 2024 the state issued 24,220 CDLs to U.S. citizens and 5,614 to non-citizens, according to Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
No matter what, we will need to be keeping some security around the process of issuing CDLs. The situation in Florida is an example of why, and from what I’m hearing from old friends still in the business, it’s hardly unique.
Leaving aside the (largely ignored) Department of Transportation figures that tell us that, in accidents between passenger vehicles and freight-bearing trucks, the passenger vehicle is at fault roughly 90% of the time, I will guarantee you that this will cause increased negative feedback on the whole of the trucking industry. Since everything you have, at some point, comes to you on a truck, the economic impact of this cannot be overestimated.
The entire nature of the trucking business has changed rather drastically over the last 30 years or so. Those changes have been coming at an accelerated rate in the last 20 years. Unqualified drivers have been a big reason for these changes. The excuse given for places like California issuing CDLs while testing applications for licensees far less stringently has been the thus-far-unproven “driver shortage.” This industry has gotten even more dangerous, while providing far less pay for the folks, both men and women, who are actually doing the work.
Add the small mountain of other government rules and regulations being put on the industry as a whole and on drivers in particular, and you see why older, more experienced drivers are driven to retire early as lesser qualified people flood the job market, lowering per-mile rates. This has made trucking, from the driver’s perspective, one of the lower paying and most dangerous jobs out there. As the older hands leave, the trucking companies still have freight to move, and this intensifies the perception of needing to hire anyone with a pulse.
I think this is an issue that will cost the Democrats dearly come election time if they keep pointing fingers and making excuses on the matter. I will not be shedding any tears for their losses over this situation. I will, instead, be shaken each time we end up with more blood on the highways because of unqualified drivers thanks to state-level politicians who want to buy votes with the CDLs they issue to people who shouldn’t have them.
Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left’s lies, new legislation wasn’t needed to secure our border, just a new president.
There’s still work to do, however. Help us continue to report the truth about the president’s border policies and mass deportations. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
