Illegal immigrant truck driver charged in deadly California crash
Claudia Cowan reports from Lodi, California, following a fatal semi-truck crash that has renewed scrutiny over licensing rules for undocumented immigrants. Authorities say Manveer Singh, an illegal immigrant, faces a vehicular manslaughter charge in the wreck. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Singh was apprehended and released at the Arizona border in 2023. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and other federal officials are now urging passage of “Delilah’s Law,” a proposal that would bar illegal immigrants from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pressing North Carolina officials to continue holding an illegal immigrant accused in a deadly hit-and-run crash that left three people dead.
Javiel Pena Sola, a citizen of El Salvador, is accused of crashing into a vehicle carrying three people on July 18 in Salisbury, North Carolina, and then leaving the scene, according to ICE. Officials said a police K-9 later helped locate him.
Two of the victims died at the crash site. A third person was flown to a hospital for emergency treatment but later succumbed to their injuries.
Javiel Pena Sola is accused of killing three people in a July 18 hit-and-run crash in North Carolina. (Getty Images; Department of Homeland Security)
“I heard people screaming … and they pulled the man out; and as they pulled him out, he started screaming,” witness Quindel Woods told WSOC-TV, describing the chaotic aftermath of the collision.
Investigators later discovered Sola’s vehicle in a creek. He has been charged with three counts of hit-and-run involving serious injury or death.
ICE said it has filed a detainer with local authorities, requesting that Sola remain in custody.
Federal agents are seen walking in uniform. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said Sola was arrested in 2016 but was released. She said he entered the United States through Arizona in April 2022.
“Although ICE had arrested him in 2016, the Obama Administration RELEASED him into American communities,” she said. “These deaths were 100% preventable. Open borders and sanctuary policies have deadly consequences.”
Sola’s criminal history includes prior convictions for reckless endangerment, failure to stop after an accident involving damage to an attended vehicle, and driving without a license in Maryland in July 2015, as well as an arrest for escaping from custody.
After his arrest in Maryland on charges of escaping from custody, law enforcement officials in Baltimore honored an ICE detainer and turned him over to federal agents in March 2016. He was then released by the Obama administration two months later, ICE said.
