A Russian illegal immigrant, who was released into the country by the Biden administration, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for causing a deadly truck crash in Minnesota in 2024.
Georgii Gabiev was driving a pickup truck in rural Minnesota while using an iPad to play a YouTube video about learning English when he collided with a semi-truck driven by Tim Tarnowski, according to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security. Gabiev missed a stop on the road and crashed into the truck, causing a “fiery collision” in Chippewa County, Minnesota, on March 5, 2024, and killing Tarnowski.
Gabiev claimed to law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene that “he was listening to a program on an iPad that was teaching him how to speak English,” according to official court documents from the case. He also said he was not “looking at the iPad when he was driving.” He reportedly entered the country illegally in 2022 through California but was later released into the U.S. by the Biden administration.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that a state trooper who arrived on the scene of the crash “saw a semitrailer truck on its side and engulfed in flames.” Tarnowski was declared dead at the scene by medics. Judge Thomas W. Van Hon, a District Court Judge for Minnesota’s Eighth Judicial District, presided over the case in July 2024. Gabiev pled guilty to criminal vehicular homicide during his trial, and Van Hon sentenced him to just one year in prison, three years’ probation, to pay $5,437 in restitution to Tarnowski’s family, and to “take a safe driving course.”
Van Hon retired in January 2025.
After being credited for time served since his arrest, Gabiev did only “just 120 days in jail,” according to DHS. ICE arrested him on June 9, 2026, in Brooklyn, New York, and he will remain in “ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”
“This illegal alien had no business being in our country and on our roadways,” said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “If it weren’t for the Biden administration’s open border policies, this tragedy would never have happened, and Tim would still be alive. This is our why. President Trump and I will never stop fighting for justice for Angel Families.”