146 illegal immigrant truck drivers arrested in Indiana in Operation Midway Blitz

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced on Thursday that 146 illegal immigrant drivers have been arrested by authorities, including drivers of semi trucks. Illegal immigrant semi truck drivers have made headlines in recent months after causing crashes that have resulted in deaths on the nation’s highways.

Noem said, "233 illegal aliens have been arrested and taken off our roads. Of those, 146 of them were drivers. That includes 46 semi-truck drivers and 82 of them that were either box trucks, buses, moving vans, vehicles such as that." The arrests came as part of a partnership with Indiana State Police. The operation took place in Northwest Indiana as part of the Chicago-area Operation Widway Blitz, DHS said in a press release. A total of 146 truck drivers were arrested, the DHS said.

She said that the CDLs issued to illegal immigrant drivers that had one "were issued from over a dozen different states," but the majority "have come from sanctuary states such as California and Illinois and New York."

Noem said, "If you are here driving on our streets illegally and our highways, you are endangering our citizens and your days are numbered."

The DHS said that criminal activity associated with the 233 arrested includes drug trafficking, driving under the influence, theft, burglary, assault, child abuse, fraud, domestic battery, and prostitution.

Earlier in October, Jashanpreet Singh, an illegal immigrant from India who came to the US under the Biden administration, was charged with causing a semi-truck crash in California that resulted in the deaths of three people. Singh was intoxicated at the time, authorities said.

In August, Harjinder Singh, an illegal immigrant from India, was charged with killing three people after making an illegal U-turn on a Florida highway. It was revealed in October that Singh failed his CDL exam 10 times over a span of two months in Washington. Following the August crash, the Trump administration paused "all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers."