Notorious trucking scheme put in spotlight as deadly crashes add up

Washington, D.C., is taking a closer look at a longtime trucking industry gimmick as illegal migrant-related highway crashes continue killing Americans.

Indiana GOP Sen. Jim Banks is demanding the Department of Transportation (DOT) investigate the prevalence of chameleon carrier networks, trucking companies that repeatedly reopen under new identities after being shut down across his state, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Calls for an investigation follow another deadly big rig accident, again involving an illegal migrant driver.

“Whatever is going on with Indiana’s trucking clusters, it is killing Hoosiers,” Banks said in a Monday letter to Derek Barrs, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Administration (FMCSA).

“I cannot stand by and watch as more of my constituents are put in harm’s way by drivers who should never have received a license in the first place,” Banks continued. “I urge you to use every tool at FMCSA’s disposal to investigate potential chameleon carriers and put violators out of service permanently.”

As the Trump administration continues cracking down on illegal migrants operating within the trucking industry, the issue of chameleon carriers has increasingly been brought to the forefront.

The term “chameleon carrier” typically applies to any trucking company that rotates through 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 name and registration number, all while using the same trucks and staff.

Indiana State Police arrested Sukhdeep Singh, a commercial driver, on Wednesday after he allegedly ran a red light in Hendricks County and slammed into a white pickup truck, killing the driver, 64-year-old Terry Schultz, at the scene. Singh, an Indian national who entered the country illegally, has since been taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed to the DCNF.

The deadly accident in Hendricks County came less than a month after Bekzhan Beishekeev, an illegal migrant truck driver from Kyrgyzstan, allegedly killed four in a roadside accident in another part of the state. Subsequent investigations into that crash revealed that Beishekeev had allegedly been driving for a chameleon carrier company and is allegedly tied to a network of Kyrgyzstani truckers involved in the scheme.

“Seven Hoosiers have been killed in six months by illegal alien truck drivers,” Banks wrote in his letter. “This is a national crisis.”

Banks says he’s received eyebrow-raising data regarding trucking carriers operating in Indiana since launching a tip line for truckers to report suspicious behavior. Nearly 10,000 Indiana-based trucking companies have registered in the DOT database in just the past six years, with more than 2,000 carriers registered under the same two surnames, according to the GOP senator.

“One suburb of Indianapolis, Greenwood, contains 1,000 newly-registered trucking carriers. Over 300 carriers are active in the University Park neighborhood, which has a population of about 600 people in roughly 250 homes,” Banks told the DOT. “That’s over one carrier for each house.”

The Trump administration has taken the recent plight of illegal migrant trucker accidents seriously, issuing a slate of reforms around commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) and applying immense pressure of state governments to take unqualified migrant truckers off the roads.

In September, the DOT heavily restricted non-domiciled CDLs after a federal audit uncovered “catastrophic patterns” of states unlawfully issuing licenses to foreign truck drivers. Earlier in February, the DOT doubled down with more rules to keep illegal migrants away from big rigs, rolling out new screening processes and eliminating a loophole that previously allowed foreign nationals with bad driving records to obtain trucking licenses.

The DOT did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF. However, the administration has recently set its sights on chameleon carriers.

During a Friday press conference, both Barrs and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced federal regulatory proposals that aim to strengthen the verification process of motor carriers, a move targeting chameleon carriers who repeatedly shut down and reopen under new DOT numbers.

“When we get on the road, we should expect that we should be safe,” Duffy said Friday. “And that those who drive those 80,000-pound big rigs, that they are well-trained, they’re well-qualified, and they’re going to be safe.”

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