Lawmakers must do more to save American lives and fix what’s fueling the trucking crisis, says the father of a young girl irreparably injured from an illegal migrant trucker.
During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Donald Trump first unveiled “Dalilah’s Law,” a legislative proposal that would block illegal migrants from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) and address other trucking regulation loopholes. Named after a young girl who was severely wounded in an accident, the bill marks the administration’s latest attempt to fix an industry currently plagued by unqualified foreign drivers.
Dalilah’s father, Marcus Coleman, supports the bill and is actively working with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to see it through the finish line. While he says the legislation does the obvious by restricting CDLs from illegal migrants, he adds that real reform would need to do so much more to keep American highways safer — including the elimination of so-called “chameleon carriers.”
“The person that hit Dalilah was a chameleon carrier,” Coleman told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They had, if I’m not mistaken, five or six different companies under that one truck.”
The term “chameleon carrier” generally applies to any trucking company that rotates through Department of Transportation (DOT) registration numbers, names or ownership structure in order to avoid enforcement actions. These companies, after being shut down by regulators, will simply reopen under a new registration number and name, all while using the same trucks and staff.
The Trump administration has addressed the blight of chameleon carriers in recent days and GOP lawmakers have pushed federal regulators to do more. Coleman says the specific trucking company involved in his daughter’s accident had already changed identities several times before the wreck, and then changed again after the fact.
“So there was, like, a total of six companies already built up within, I want to say, two years or three years prior to her accident and one year after her accident,” he told the DCNF.
Dalilah and her stepfather were involved in a multi-car pileup in San Bernardino County on June 20, 2024, with medical responders airlifting her to a hospital to treat her critical injuries. The crash resulted in the first-grader’s inability to walk, talk, eat orally or attend school as planned, and she required six months of hospital treatment before she could ultimately return home to her family.
Partap Singh, an Indian national, was arrested and charged with causing the horrific accident, with investigators stating that he drove at an unsafe speed and did not stop for traffic or a construction zone, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Singh illegally entered the U.S. in October 2022 and was released into the country by the Biden administration, where he later obtained a CDL from California officials, DHS confirmed. After the crash, he was ultimately taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and has since been detained in a facility in Texas, according to detention records reviewed by the DCNF.
In response to a slate of deadly accidents caused by illegal migrant truckers, the DOT in September heavily restricted non-domiciled CDLs and revealed that a federal audit uncovered “catastrophic patterns” of states unlawfully issuing licenses to foreign truck drivers. Earlier in February, the DOT doubled down with additional rules to keep illegal migrants away from 18-wheelers, rolling out new screening processes and eliminating a loophole that previously allowed foreign nationals with bad driving records to obtain trucking licenses.
Trump invited Dalilah and her father to Tuesday’s State of the Union address, where they watched him reveal Dalilah’s Law to the country. The following day, Indiana Sen. Jim Banks officially introduced the legislation.
If passed and signed into law, Banks’ bill would limit trucking licenses to American citizens, lawful permanent residents and certain work visa holders, according to his office. The legislation would additionally revoke trucking licenses issued to illegal migrants and require CDL tests be administered in English only.
Banks has taken the lead in addressing the trucker crisis, with the Indiana Republican having recently launched a trucker tipline for insiders to report malfeasance in the industry and penning a letter earlier in February asking the Federal Motor Carrier Administration to crack down on chameleon carriers.
Coleman says he’s happy with Banks’ legislation, but he hopes to work with him on several items. He added that chameleon carriers, the CDL mills handing out licenses like candy and all the brokers involved must be taken to the woodshed.
“Everybody’s sitting there pushing against the immigrant drivers,” Coleman stated. That is a huge spoke on this wheel, but if you get rid of the immigrant drivers and you don’t deal with the brokers or the companies that are hiring these drivers, the next thing that’s going to happen is it’s going to change from immigrant drivers to drivers who aren’t qualified to have a CDL, but are still driving.”
Coleman said that Dalilah has a tough road ahead as far as her recovery goes — she now lives with cerebral palsy and developmental delays. But he added that she’s slowly becoming her old self again. The California father reflected on what it means to have this legislation passed in her honor.
“You know, being a human here on Earth, about 99% of people here leave no legacy, no mark,” he told the DCNF. “Once her law passes, it’s not something that can be repealed. It’s not something that can be easily overturned. This is something that’s going to be on the federal books forever, so I’m excited to have that for her.”
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