After a Florida traffic tragedy claims 3 lives, the foreign lobbying playbook kicks in
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy: ‘A driver who can’t understand English will not drive a commercial vehicle in this country. Period’
In the days after three Americans were killed in a horrendous Florida highway crash caused by an illegal alien from India, a campaign quickly emerged – not from the local community, but from Indian media and diaspora organizations intent on shaping perceptions of a U.S. criminal case. As the victims’ families grieve, that chorus urges leniency and portrays routine law enforcement as “discriminatory.”
Harjinder Singh, an Indian national living unlawfully in the U.S., has been charged with three counts of vehicular homicide after allegedly making an illegal U-turn Aug. 12 along a Florida highway, resulting in three fatalities, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Singh, who reportedly has limited English-language skills, allegedly made the turn through an “Official Use Only” access point in St. Lucie County, blocking all lanes with his truck and causing a deadly wreck.
Ironically, back in May, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, while introducing new Trump administration enforcement guidelines, announced: “A driver who can’t understand English will not drive a commercial vehicle in this country. Period.”
Judge Lauren Sweet of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit denied bond to Singh, describing the accused driver as an “unauthorized alien” and a substantial flight risk.
On Aug. 19, Duffy announced the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had opened a formal investigation.
“If states had followed the rules, this driver would never have been behind the wheel and three precious lives would still be with us,” Duffy said, calling the crash “a preventable tragedy” and pledging to “use every tool” to hold states and bad actors accountable.
‘The families of the deceased deserve justice’
But from abroad, the narrative pivoted quickly. In the Hindustan Times, the North American Punjabi Association argued that “Punjabi truckers are the backbone of the logistics industry in North America” and called for a “balanced approach to safety and fair treatment of immigrant workers.”
The Times of India went further, quoting MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal’s claim that “Punjabi and Sikh drivers make up 20% of the United States’ trucking industry” and “Any mass-level action against them would have a detrimental effect on trucking families and would be discriminatory.”
Relatives in Punjab appealed for compassion, saying the driver mortgaged family land to reach the United States and warned that a long sentence would ruin Harjinder Singh’s life. Supporters added that a potential decades-long term would devastate his family, cutting off income and leaving them with debt and uncertainty.
In reality, bond rulings, immigration reviews, CDL verification, training standards and insurance checks are not ethnicity tests, but are neutral safeguards that apply to everyone because a 40-ton vehicle can cause catastrophic harm when rules are ignored.
Likewise, a judge labeling the defendant an “unauthorized alien” and a “substantial flight risk” is not a cultural judgment, but a legal one grounded in statute and risk assessment. And a federal safety investigation is not a referendum on any community; it is the state doing its job after three funerals.
There is also an unavoidable irony: If many of the loudest Indian diaspora advocates are in America lawfully and came through the proper channels, the principled position would be to defend equal enforcement, not to demand carveouts for co-nationals. The same rules that protected their own path – immigration screening, licensing and safety compliance – are the rules that protect every family driving beside a tractor-trailer at highway speed.
America’s courts and regulators answer to evidence and law, not transnational pressure campaigns. Calling routine public-safety enforcement “discrimination” while asking for India-specific exceptions does not strengthen trust in the system, it erodes it. The way to honor both immigrants who follow the rules and the victims of this crash is the same: Apply one standard of law to everyone, without fear, favor or foreign lobbying.
