A 21-year-old Indian national pleaded guilty this week to three counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence in connection with an October 2025 semitruck crash on Interstate 10 in San Bernardino County that killed three people. Jashanpreet Singh received a sentence of four years and eight months in prison.
Dashcam footage showed Singh's semitruck plowing into congested traffic without braking, killing three and injuring several others. Toxicology tests ruled out drug or alcohol impairment.
However, questions persist about how Singh obtained a commercial driver's license. Federal records show Singh crossed the southern border illegally in 2022 and was encountered by Border Patrol agents in California's El Centro Sector in March of that year. He was released pending an immigration hearing. By June 2025, nearly three years later, Singh had obtained a California commercial driver's license.
The licensing approval rested on employment authorization documents that California officials say were federally approved. In September 2025, just weeks before the crash, the federal Department of Transportation discovered compliance problems in how California was issuing commercial driver's licenses. The DOT issued a directive ordering the state to halt new CDL issuances to noncitizens and review existing licenses.
Singh should have been caught in that review. Federal officials have stated publicly that he should have been disqualified under emergency DOT policy implemented at that time. Yet on October 15, 2025—after Singh turned 21—a restriction on his commercial driver's license was removed. Six days later, he was driving the truck involved in the fatal crash.
California maintains that Singh's eligibility was based on valid federal employment documents it had been given. Federal transportation officials counter that new emergency rules should have disqualified him regardless. Neither account fully explains how a licensing restriction was lifted on October 15 when federal authorities say a statewide review and pause on noncitizen CDLs was underway.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has used the Singh case as a centerpiece of the Trump administration's argument for revoking commercial driver's licenses held by undocumented immigrants nationwide. The administration has also pointed to two other fatal crashes—one involving an Uzbek national in Ohio and another involving a Haitian national in Pennsylvania—as evidence of a broader safety crisis.
California's Department of Motor Vehicles and the federal DOT should explain in detail why the October 15 restriction removal was processed while the federal compliance review was active, what communication occurred between state and federal officials during September, whether data-sharing gaps prevented the licensing system from flagging Singh's status, and where responsibility lies for the disconnect between what each agency says should have happened and what actually occurred.
These questions are best answered through public records requests, legislative inquiry and potentially inspector general review. Transportation safety depends on licensing systems that work as intended. If Singh's case reveals systemic problems in how CDLs are vetted and issued, those problems need fixing regardless of the immigration status of the person who slipped through.
