A week after the most recent killing of an American by an illegal immigrant truck driver, the Trump administration announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be deployed to truck weigh stations nationwide in a coordinated effort to get the more than 200,000 noncitizen truck drivers, many of whom can’t speak English, off the nation’s highways. It is a welcome move, long overdue.
The cost of the Democratic Party’s reckless open border policy was again made clear on July 1, when Pennsylvania State Police Trooper First Class Michael Pahira was killed on Interstate 81 while conducting a commercial vehicle inspection. Authorities say Michael Bon, a Haitian national, drove his tractor-trailer onto the shoulder and struck Pahira during the inspection, killing him. Homeland Security officials confirmed that Bon was released into the country on parole by President Joe Biden in July 2024 and was issued a commercial driver’s license by Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA).
Bon’s case was not an outlier. In February, Bekzhan Beishekeev, an illegal immigrant from Kyrgyzstan with a Pennsylvania CDL, was accused of driving into oncoming traffic in Indiana and killing four people in a van. In August 2025, Harjinder Singh, an illegal immigrant from India with a California CDL, was accused of making an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike, causing a crash that killed three people. In October 2025, Jashanpreet Singh, an illegal immigrant from India who held a commercial license, was charged after a fiery crash on California’s I-10 killed three more.
Each of these deaths could have been prevented if Democratic state governments had cooperated with federal officials in enforcing immigration laws. Instead, they treated commercial driver’s licenses as another benefit to be handed to people who had no legal or moral right to be here.
The Trump administration has begun cleaning up the mess. Federal officials say they have removed 28,000 illegal immigrant truck drivers from roads, but nearly 200,000 more remain behind the wheel. That is why ICE’s deployment to weigh stations is necessary. As border czar Tom Homan explained, cooperation remains uneven.
“The problem is we’re working very well with red states,” Homan said. “Blue states are still a struggle, right. Places like New York. I mean, ICE and [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] can’t even get access to the DMV database to run the checks.” Until those states stop shielding illegal immigrants from federal scrutiny, the federal government must go directly to the highways where the danger is most immediate.
Illegal immigrants can drive commercial trucks when states issue them non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses, a narrow category meant for foreign nationals here lawfully, but which is increasingly abused by blue-state motor vehicle agencies. States are supposed to verify identity and lawful status, but lax agencies have turned that exception into a loophole for illegal immigrants released on parole, temporary work authorization, or other questionable paperwork.
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Federal law also requires commercial truck drivers to read and speak English well enough to understand signs, answer officials, and complete reports. But in 2016, the Obama administration told inspectors to stop removing drivers from the road solely for failing the English-proficiency requirement, effectively gutting enforcement until the Trump administration restored it.
Immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, and enforcement is especially necessary when illegal immigrants are operating 40-ton commercial trucks across state lines. No state has a right to endanger American drivers by licensing people who should not be in the country and cannot read English road signs. Trump has every authority and the obligation to use ICE to protect highways from illegal immigrant truckers who should not have been in the country, let alone behind the wheel.