Washington state refused to honor an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer for an illegal immigrant truck driver who allegedly caused a fatal crash there, according to a Tuesday press release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Indian national Kamalpreet Singh, 25, was piloting a semi-truck that struck a stopped Mazda in Washington state on Thursday morning, killing the car’s driver, Robert B. Pearson, 29, at the scene, the Auburn Examiner reported, citing the Washington State Patrol. “Instead of honoring the ICE arrest detainer, these politicians chose to release this public safety threat back onto America’s roads,” the press release stated, referring to Singh.
Washington was listed as a sanctuary state, along with 11 others, on a list published by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice in August. The state has a Democratic governor, Bob Ferguson, and Democrats control houses of the state legislature.
Ferguson’s predecessor, former Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, in 2019 signed a law cementing the blue state’s “sanctuary” status, restricting local law enforcement’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Ferguson was the state’s attorney general at the time.
“These demented and dangerous sanctuary policies have deadly consequences,” said DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin in a statement to the DCNF. “Robert Pearson would still be alive today if the Biden administration hadn’t released this illegal alien into our country. How many more Americans have to be killed before Democrat politicians start to put the public’s safety ahead of politics?”
According to ICE’s website, an immigration detainer is a request to law enforcement to hold a foreign national “for up to 48 hours beyond the time they would ordinarily release them so DHS has time to assume custody in accordance with federal immigration law.”
The release also confirmed that Singh had “illegally entered the U.S. in 2023 near Lukeville, Ariz. and was released into this country by the Biden administration.”
Singh, a resident of California, was driving with a commercial driver’s license (CDL) issued by the Golden State, a Washington State Patrol spokesperson confirmed to the DCNF. A federal government investigation found California had unlawfully issued 17,000 non-domiciled CDLs to migrants.
The Indian illegal immigrant was released from King County jail on a $100,000 bond, Fox News first reported on Friday.
The incident follows similar crashes in Florida in August and in California in October — which were also both allegedly caused by Indian illegal immigrants with the last name “Singh.”
Fox News’ Bill Melugin first reported in a Friday afternoon X post that Singh was an Indian national whom authorities arrested at the Arizona-Mexico border in 2023. However, he was released into the U.S.’ interior by former President Joe Biden’s administration, Melugin added, citing a senior ICE source.
“I’m told ICE has placed a detainer with him on local law enforcement in King County, WA,” Melugin added in his X post.
BREAKING: I’m told by a senior ICE source that the semi truck driver arrested in a deadly crash in Washington state yesterday is an Indian illegal alien who was caught and released at the Border by the Biden admin.
I’m told that 25-year-old KAMALPREET SINGH was arrested by U.S.… pic.twitter.com/UJdurYEjhm
Should Washington state change its sanctuary policies regarding illegal immigrants involved in crimes?— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) December 12, 2025
Melugin clarified that Kamalpreet Singh is not known to be related to the truck drivers accused of causing the deadly crashes in California and Florida, despite the three men all sharing the same surname.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt replied to Melugin’s X post stressing that “unqualified illegal alien drivers are a public safety threat.”
She added in her post that President Donald Trump and Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy “will aggressively enforce our laws to protect the safety of American truckers, drivers, and passengers by ensuring anyone behind the wheel of a commercial vehicle is here legally, properly qualified, AND proficient in our national language —English!”
As I said during the @WhiteHouse Press Briefing yesterday, unqualified illegal alien drivers are a public safety threat.
President Trump and @SecDuffy will aggressively enforce our laws to protect the safety of American truckers, drivers, and passengers by ensuring anyone… https://t.co/Ks65VdoCX5pic.twitter.com/DNeCll1pOt
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) December 12, 2025
Duffy replied to Melugin on the platform stating that the incident is “EXACTLY why states must comply” with the DOT’s rules cracking down on states issuing CDLs to non-citizens.
Hours earlier, the DOT secretary threatened to withhold tens of millions of federal taxpayer dollars in highway funding to blue states who do not comply with his department’s rules.
This is EXACTLY why states must comply with @USDOT’s rules. The time is NOW. https://t.co/ghrAQBJ4RK
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) December 12, 2025
“If we’re going to have drivers on American roadways, they need to be the best trained … because if operated incorrectly or inappropriately, these [vehicles] are lethal weapons on American roadways,” Duffy said in a Wednesday press conference. ”
“We will pull every dollar possible from every single state that’s unwilling to work with this administration and these longstanding rules to make sure that when [an] American family gets in a car, they shouldn’t be worried that they have an unqualified foreigner operating an 80,000 pound big rig that could endanger their lives,” the secretary added.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Xnatedawgx/Wikimedia Commons)
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