Crash by Illegal Immigrant in Indiana Draws National Outrage
Four people in Indiana are dead following a crash involving a semi truck on Feb. 3, 2026. The driver of the semi truck, Bekzhan Beishekeev, is a 30-year-old illegal immigrant from Kyrgyzstan who was paroled into the country under the Biden administration’s CBP One app, according to a statement by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS also stated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had issued a detainer for Beishkeev and took custody of him on Feb. 5, 2026. “He will remain in ICE custody pending immigration proceedings,” they added.
Indiana State Police and the Jay County Sheriff’s Office responded to reports of a crash at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, according to local media reports. The crash occurred when the semi truck, driven by Beishkeev, allegedly swerved into the opposite lane and collided with a van. Passengers Henry Eicher, Menno Eicher, Paul Eicher, and Simon Girod, 50, 25, 19, and 23, respectively, were declared dead at the scene. All of them were residents of Bryant, Indiana, and were members of the state’s Amish community. The driver of the van, Donald Stipp, 55, was seriously injured and is being treated at a hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana. (RELATED: Privilege Lost Isn’t Oppression — It’s Justice)
In addition to being paroled into the country under the Biden administration, DHS also stated that Beishkeev was given a commercial driver’s license by Pennsylvania. “These decisions have had deadly consequences and led to the death of four innocent people in Indiana on Tuesday… It is incredibly dangerous for illegal aliens, who often don’t know our traffic laws or even English, to be operating semi-trucks on America’s roads. These sanctuary governors must stop giving illegal aliens commercial driver’s licenses before another American gets killed,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. (RELATED: Keep On Truckin’ — If You Are Rightly Licensed)
The incident has garnered national attention. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed the incident in a press conference at the White House on Feb. 5, 2026, saying that “[t]his is another tragedy that could have been prevented if not for the wide-open border” and chastised the media present in the room for not covering it more thoroughly. Indiana U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, a Republican, also weighed in, posting on X, “4 men from Indiana were killed this week because of an illegal Joe Biden allowed into the country. Husbands, fathers, sons all gone. We must deport every illegal and get them off our roads!”
Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro responded to criticism of his state’s policies in a statement to Fox News, with spokesman Alex Peterson saying that
[e]very person who applies for a non-domiciled commercial driver’s license issued by PennDOT must provide proof of identity and proof of their legal presence in the United States. That information is verified by the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, administered by Kristi Noem and the United States Department of Homeland Security. The individual in question had legal status in Kristi Noem’s database when the license was issued in July 2025 and still shows as eligible to receive a license as of today. Kristi Noem should focus on minding the shop in her own agency, as her incompetence and operational failures seem to be matching the scale of her moral failures as the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Numerous bills in the current Congress have been proposed to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses. These include H.R. 5108, S. 2774, and H.R. 5330, which would threaten federal funding to states that choose to offer such licenses. Most applicable to this case is H.R. 5863 from New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, appropriately titled the No CDLs for Illegals Act. This bill is specifically focused on prohibiting illegal immigrants from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs), the type that Beishekeev had. None of these bills have become law. Several Republican-led states, including Florida, have passed legislation refusing to honor out-of-state driver’s licenses given to illegal aliens.
These legislative actions have been precipitated by a series of high-profile crashes by truck drivers illegally residing in the United States. For example, in December 2025, it was reported by Fox News that Indian national Rajinder Kumar, an illegal immigrant alleged by authorities to be guilty of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment for his role in a fatal Oregon crash that killed two, was given a work authorization by the Biden administration and given a CDL by the state of California. He was hardly alone in that: according to a statement by DHS, during Operation Midway Blitz, 146 illegal immigrant truck drivers were arrested in northwest Indiana. The top states issuing CDLs to these individuals were Illinois, California, and New York, the agency added.
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