Indiana has now stopped and prosecuted nearly 300 illegal immigrants who were cruising America's highways behind the wheel of 18-wheelers — armed with commercial driver's licenses handed to them by New York and California. Let that sink in. Sanctuary states literally gave illegal aliens permission to operate 80,000-pound vehicles on roads your family drives every day.
But sure, tell me again how sanctuary policies are about "compassion."
The crackdown is part of the Trump administration's Operation Midway Blitz, which launched last year and has been lighting up blue-state CDL fraud like a Christmas tree. According to the NY Post, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference in Gary, Indiana where she made the administration's position crystal clear: "If you are here driving on our streets and highways illegally, you are endangering our citizens, and your days are numbered."
She wasn't bluffing. In one operation alone, Indiana State Police and ICE arrested 223 illegal immigrants on Indiana highways near the Illinois state line — 146 of them were truck drivers. The top states that issued those CDLs? California. New York. Illinois. The sanctuary trifecta.
Indiana State Police Secretary Anthony Scott put it plainly: "This is not about immigration status alone. It's about public safety." No kidding. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons was even more direct: "It's unconscionable that illegal aliens have CDLs and are driving 18-wheelers."
Unconscioable is one word for it. Criminal negligence by blue-state governments is another.
The details get worse the deeper you dig. One illegal immigrant truck driver, Harjinder Singh, allegedly crossed the southern border back in 2018 and somehow received a CDL in Washington state in 2023 — after failing the CDL test ten times. Ten. He later caused a crash in Fort Pierce, Florida that killed three people. Another illegal, Julio Cucul-Bol from Guatemala, killed a woman named Katie Abraham in a drunk driving hit-and-run.
These aren't statistics. These are dead Americans.
And while Indiana and Oklahoma — which busted 250-plus illegal immigrant truckers in its own operation — are actually doing something about it, New York is actively making things worse. The state is set to lose more than $73.5 million in federal transportation funding because the Transportation Department found New York has refused to revoke nearly 33,000 questionable commercial driver's licenses held by immigrants. Thirty-three thousand.
New York would literally rather lose $73.5 million than stop handing truck keys to people who shouldn't be in the country, let alone behind the wheel of a Peterbilt.
The criminal histories uncovered during these operations read like a rap sheet greatest hits: drug trafficking, assault and battery, drunk driving, child abuse, rape, domestic violence, fraud, and prostitution. These are the people California and New York decided were qualified to haul freight through your neighborhood.
Here's the bottom line. Red states are cleaning up the mess that blue states created on purpose. Indiana said "not on our roads" and backed it up with handcuffs. Secretary Noem said their days are numbered. We're counting down.
