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He eventually settled in California, where state officials have repeatedly clashed with the federal government over the issuance of commercial driver’s licenses to individuals lacking legal immigration status or proper work authorization.
Now critics say that policy has produced exactly the catastrophe they warned about.
Singh, 24, now faces multiple criminal charges, including vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, felony hit-and-run resulting in death, and resisting arrest. Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately lodged a detainer against him following his arrest.
Federal officials did not hold back in their response.
“This criminal illegal alien from India should never have been behind the wheel of a semi-truck and allowed to kill two innocent people in a multi-vehicle crash in California,” DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis declared after the crash.
Meanwhile, Duffy confirmed that California had in fact issued Singh a commercial driver’s license despite months of mounting federal pressure on the state to stop the practice.
That revelation immediately intensified scrutiny on Governor Gavin Newsom and California’s DMV leadership.
Last year, Duffy issued an emergency federal order demanding states stop issuing non-domiciled CDLs to individuals lacking valid work authorization. States across the country complied with the directive.
California did not.
Federal investigators later uncovered what officials described as massive licensing irregularities involving tens of thousands of commercial licenses. According to federal findings, California had issued more than 20,000 CDLs to individuals whose immigration or work status either had expired or was never legally valid under federal regulations.
Washington demanded the licenses be revoked.
California resisted.
State officials eventually agreed to cancel thousands of questionable licenses but sought delays even after federal deadlines had already been established. The dispute escalated publicly after Duffy accused Newsom’s administration of misleading the public about compliance efforts.
“Gavin Newsom is lying,” Duffy posted bluntly on social media during the standoff.
The Biden administration later withheld roughly $160 million in highway funding tied to the licensing controversy, but California officials continued portraying the federal crackdown as political theater.
Now the latest deadly crash has reopened old wounds and raised even more disturbing questions.
Federal officials say Manvir Singh is now the fourth illegal immigrant truck driver with the surname Singh tied to fatal crashes involving commercial vehicles since last year.
One of those cases involved Jashanpreet Singh, who allegedly slammed a semi-truck into stopped traffic near Ontario, California, killing three people while reportedly under the influence of drugs.
Another case involved Kamalpreet Singh, who allegedly crushed a young man between two trucks in Washington state.
Yet another involved Harjinder Singh, who reportedly failed portions of his CDL testing multiple times, struggled to demonstrate English proficiency during law enforcement encounters, but still managed to obtain commercial licenses connected to both California and Washington before a fatal Florida crash killed three people.
DHS officials say the repeated incidents reveal what they describe as “a growing trend involving illegal immigrant commercial drivers from India.”
The mounting death toll has also drawn outrage from Republican lawmakers.
“So many innocent lives have been lost because of illegals on our roads. It makes me sick reading about these preventable tragedies,” Senator Jim Banks said after the latest revelations surfaced.
Banks has since pushed legislation known as the Dalilah Law, named after five-year-old Dalilah Coleman, a child permanently disabled after another crash involving an illegal immigrant truck driver operating with a California-issued CDL.
Critics argue the issue is no longer simply about immigration policy. They say it has become a public safety crisis involving massive commercial vehicles capable of catastrophic destruction.
Supporters of stricter enforcement say California ignored repeated warnings, dismissed federal concerns, and continued prioritizing ideological politics over basic highway safety.
Now, after another deadly collision and two more lives lost, the state once again finds itself under national scrutiny for policies critics say never should have existed in the first place.
