Manvir Singh, a 24-year-old Indian national who entered the United States after being released at the border by the Biden administration in 2023, has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and other offenses following a fatal multi-vehicle collision in Lodi, California, officials said Wednesday.
The crash occurred when three vehicles were slowing to stop on a highway. Authorities allege Singh failed to slow his commercial truck behind them, striking the vehicles and triggering a pileup that killed two people: Clark James Fojas, 20, and a juvenile whose name has not been released. Five additional victims were transported to area hospitals, with two sustaining major injuries.
Singh was arrested by the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office and faces charges of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, resisting or obstructing a police officer, and hit-and-run resulting in injury or death. His bail was set at $185,000, according to jail records reviewed by ABC10 Sacramento. He is scheduled to appear in court Thursday afternoon.
California's Department of Motor Vehicles issued Singh a commercial driver's license in March 2025, more than a year after he entered the country. Federal investigators from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration are now examining how Singh obtained his CDL and what oversight failures allowed it to happen, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday.
The trucking company that employed Singh is also under investigation, Duffy noted. "This criminal illegal alien from India should never have been behind the wheel of a semi-truck and allowed to kill two innocent people," Acting Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. "This is yet another example of why illegal aliens should not be operating trucks on American highways."
What the Right Is Saying
Trump administration officials are using the incident to renew calls for Dalilah's Law, federal legislation named after a young girl who survived a collision with an illegal immigrant truck driver in California when she was five years old. The proposed law would prohibit states from granting commercial driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants.
Transportation Secretary Duffy said Dalilah's Law "would have revoked this illegal trucker's license." He called on Congress to pass the measure immediately, arguing that state-level licensing policies create dangerous gaps in federal transportation safety oversight. Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Bis echoed those calls, saying: "We need Congress to pass Dalilah's Law to prohibit states from granting illegal aliens commercial driver licenses."
Marcus Coleman, Dalilah's father and a trucker himself, has spent months publicly urging California Governor Gavin Newsom to address the issue. According to The Daily Wire, Marcus told the outlet in February that he had not received a response from the governor. "How do you not see Dalilah? How do you allow politics to blind you from a five-year-old girl at the time whose life is forever changed," he said.
What the Left Is Saying
Progressive immigration advocates have cautioned against using the incident to broadly characterize immigrants, noting that most truck accidents involve U.S.-born drivers and that employer accountability should be examined regardless of a driver's citizenship status. Some Democratic lawmakers have argued that enhanced CDL screening protocols—rather than blanket bans tied to immigration status—would better address highway safety concerns.
Immigration attorneys have noted in prior similar cases that states like California conduct background checks for commercial licenses, and that gaps in federal database sharing between immigration enforcement agencies create challenges for state licensing authorities attempting to verify eligibility. Some advocates contend that trucking industry labor shortages have created pressure to expedite licensing without adequate training or verification timelines.
What the Numbers Show
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported 5,788 large truck fatalities in 2022, the most recent year with complete federal data. Immigration status of truck drivers involved in crashes is not systematically tracked in national crash databases, making precise statistics on incidents involving non-citizens difficult to verify independently.
California's commercial vehicle program issued approximately 150,000 CDL licenses annually over the past five years, according to state DMV reports. The state's AB 60 law, enacted in 2015, allows undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses if they meet other standard requirements—a provision that has been extended to commercial licenses by regulatory interpretation.
Federal immigration enforcement detainer requests to California jails averaged approximately 1,200 per month before recent policy changes, according to Department of Homeland Security data. The state's sanctuary policies limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
The Bottom Line
The Lodi collision is likely to intensify legislative pressure for federal action on commercial licensing and immigration enforcement at the intersection of transportation safety. Dalilah's Law has been introduced in previous congressional sessions but failed to advance; its proponents argue this case provides renewed momentum, particularly given the Trump administration's vocal support.
Federal investigators are expected to release findings on how Singh obtained his CDL within weeks. The trucking company's employment verification processes and any federal oversight failures will be part of that review. Congressional hearings on commercial licensing standards could follow if investigators identify systemic gaps in state-to-federal database sharing.
Singh's court appearance Thursday will mark the beginning of criminal proceedings that may take months to resolve. Separately, civil liability claims against both Singh and his employer are anticipated, according to legal observers familiar with similar cases.