An illegal immigrant truck driver was arrested last month after police recovered nearly $3 million worth of stolen toxic tungsten oxide powder from his semi-truck, a case that is renewing scrutiny of how illegal immigrants keep landing behind the wheel of commercial rigs carrying hazardous cargo across American highways.
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Greenfield police received an alert around 6 a.m. on June 27 about cargo stolen out of Pennsylvania and believed to be traveling through Indiana on a nearby interstate. Officers spotted the semi-truck using a Flock camera and stopped Deepak Kumar, 31, a national of India, who was hauling 10 pallets of tungsten oxide powder weighing nearly 40,000 pounds. The chemical is used in armor-piercing ammunition, ceramics, lasers, optical equipment and high-tech windows.
Kumar, who had been living in Fresno, California, handed officers a California commercial driver’s license, an expired work visa and a fraudulent New York license, according to local reports. The shipment had been due for pickup on June 24 but was delayed a day, and the shipping company contacted authorities after losing contact with the driver on June 26. The cargo was ultimately bound for Mitsubishi Materials Corporation in Japan and was returned to a company representative after police confirmed it inside the trailer during a search.
The Department of Homeland Security told the Daily Wire that Kumar entered the country illegally, evading border authorities at an unknown time, and has a criminal history that includes prior arrests for fraud, identity theft, forgery, swindling and larceny. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lodged a detainer with the Bradford County Prison seeking custody of Kumar rather than his release, and he is now being held in ICE custody in California. It remains unclear whether local authorities honored the detainer.
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The case lands amid a Trump administration crackdown on states handing out commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, following a string of fatal crashes involving foreign nationals behind the wheel of big rigs. Federal officials have singled out California as among the worst offenders.
Then acting ICE Director Todd Lyons warned last year that unqualified and unvetted foreign truckers hauling heavy loads across the country pose a national security risk, not just a public safety one.
“We don’t know what they’re carrying across state lines in an 18-wheeler, terrorists will stop at nothing to harm the United States, and it is well within the realm of possibility that some of these trucks … could be carrying toxic chemicals, bombs, or God knows what,” Lyons said.
