Homeland Security asks CA to keep truck driver in fatal Highway 99 crash in jail
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Manvir Singh faces vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run charges in a Lodi crash.
- Two people were killed in Tuesday’s crash involving four vehicles on Highway 99.
- Homeland Security said Singh in jail, alleging he entered the country illegally.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is asking California to keep a truck driver accused in a deadly Lodi crash in jail, alleging the man facing criminal charges entered the country illegally three years ago.
The California Highway Patrol arrested Manvir Singh, 24, on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run resulting in death, both felony charges. Jail records show Singh also faces a misdemeanor charge of obstructing or resisting officers in connection with the crash that killed two people Tuesday on Highway 99.
Singh was being held at the San Joaquin County Jail. His bail amount was set at $185,000. He was scheduled to appear Thursday afternoon for his arraignment hearing in San Joaquin Superior Court.
In a news release posted online Thursday, federal officials announced that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement submitted a detainer asking California to not release Singh. The news release from the Department of Homeland Security asked Gov. Gavin Newsom specifically and California sanctuary politicians to keep Singh in custody.
“This criminal illegal alien from India should never have been behind the wheel of a semi-truck and allowed to kill two innocent people in a multi-vehicle crash in California,” Lauren Bis, the acting assistant secretary of the department’s Office of Public Affairs, said in the news release. “This is yet another example of why illegal aliens should not be operating trucks on American highways.”
The vehicle crash involving four vehicles, including the big-rig Singh was driving, was reported about 12:20 p.m. Tuesday in the northbound lanes of Highway 99 near the Harney Lane exit ramp in Lodi, according to the CHP.
Officer Itzel Aguilar, a spokesperson for the CHP’s Stockton area office, said Singh tried to flee the scene after the vehicle crash before he was apprehended.
Homeland Security officials said Singh entered the country illegally in July 2023 in Arizona and that he was released by federal authorities during President Joe Biden’s administration.
Immigration officials working under the Trump administration targeted truck drivers last year in enforcement operations in California. In December, federal officials announced that Border Patrol agents arrested 42 people with commercial driver’s licenses issued to immigrants, including 31 from California, who were taken into custody at immigration checkpoints and highways.
That same month, another federal immigration operation targeting California trucking companies over two days led to the arrests of 45 more people with commercial licenses.
About a month earlier, news outlets reported California would be revoking 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses issued to immigrants after finding the licenses’ expiration dates extended beyond the drivers’ legal stay in the U.S.
In a lawsuit filed by the Sikh Coalition, the Asian Law Caucus and the Jakara Movement, an Alameda Superior Court judge issued a ruling that allowed more than 20,000 immigrant truck drivers in California to keep their commercial driver’s licenses, at least temporarily.
In Thursday’s Homeland Security news release, Bis urged Congress to pass a proposed federal law that would bar any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who entered the country illegally.
