Border Patrol agents said they nabbed 36 illegal immigrants who were driving tractor trailers on roads during a recent operation in Arizona, highlighting what the Trump administration has described as a wave of migrants getting behind the wheel of dangerous vehicles.
Operation Checkmate was led by the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector and ran from May 11-15.
Agents detected a total of 52 illegal immigrants during the operation, with 36 of them nabbed while driving semitrucks.
“Operation Checkmate reflects our commitment to safeguarding communities and roads from unlawfully present drivers who pose significant risks to public safety,” said Dustin W. Caudle, acting chief patrol agent in Yuma. “My agents are on patrol every day to ensure we stop these individuals and prevent more deadly crashes from occurring on the road across the United States.”
Harjinder Singh is escorted onto an …
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Of the 36 truck drivers, 29 of them actually had commercial driver’s licenses issued by states, even though the Trump administration says they weren’t supposed to.
The government calls them non-domiciled drivers. Most of them were here on legally iffy Biden immigration leniency programs, such as “humanitarian parole.”
Despite that lack of firm status, a number of states — most notably California, Washington and New York — were willing to issue them commercial driver’s licenses.
Some of those drivers have been involved in horrific accidents in recent months, drawing attention to the situation.
Florida had asked the Supreme Court to hear a case challenging Washington And California, citing the case of Harjinder Singh, who authorities said made an illegal U-turn across a median on the Florida Turnpike, crashing into a minivan and killing all three of its passengers.
Mr. Singh, a citizen of India, obtained his license from Washington even though Florida said he couldn’t read English well enough to understand America’s road signs.
The Supreme Court declined to hear Florida’s case.
Indian nationals predominated among the Border Patrol Arizona arrests, accounting for 30 of them. The other six were from Mexico, El Salvador and Russia.
Customs and Border Protection said most of them did have work permits issued during the Biden administration but which “are no longer valid.”
CBP said all of those caught will be deported.
Part of the problem, according to federal officials, is that the work permits are temporary, and conditional. When the Trump administration revoked Biden-era parole programs, it meant those permits were also suddenly invalid — though the cards themselves still had validity dates in the future.
And some states issued licenses that stretched beyond the work permit expiration date anyway.
The Transportation Department accused California and New York of doing just that.
Last year, the department announced it was withholding some grant money from California until the state changed its practices and revoked thousands of already-issued licenses.
And in April, the department issued a similar declaration against New York.
Federal officials said a review of 200 non-domiciled drivers in New York found more than half were issued in violation of federal law.
