INDIANA – Today, Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) launched the TruckSafe Tipline for truckers and those who work in the trucking industry to share concerns about carriers employing or contracting with drivers who are not legally in the United States, who are not authorized to drive a truck, or who cannot meet required English-language safety standards.
The TruckSafe Tipline can be found here.
Reports submitted to the TruckSafe Tipline will be reviewed and shared with the U.S. Department of Transportation and its Office of Inspector General to help protect roadway safety and ensure a fair, lawful trucking industry.
Senator Jim Banks said, “Indiana is the Crossroads of America, and Hoosiers are getting killed because drivers who shouldn’t be here in the first place are behind the wheel. If you’re driving a truck on our roads, you need to be legal, you need to be able to read traffic signs, and you need to follow the law. The TruckSafe Tipline gives people on the ground a way to speak up when they see carriers cutting corners and putting lives at risk.”
Last week, a Kyrgyzstani national who crossed the southern border illegally in December 2023 and was let into the U.S. by the Biden administration by using the CBP One cell phone app, killed four Indiana men after swerving into oncoming traffic on State Road 67 in Jay County. The victims of the accident include a 50-year-old father, his two sons, ages 19 and 25, and one other person.
Over the weekend, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said AJ Partners, the carrier that employed the illegal alien involved in the Jay County crash, and a number of other companies are under investigation by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Duffy stated, “These interconnected carriers have all the markings of FRAUD and are accused of being CHAMELEON CARRIERS. This is when companies swap names and DOT numbers to avoid enforcement.”
This was not the first fatal accident caused by an illegal truck driver on Indiana’s roads. In November 2025, a Georgian national who entered the country illegally during the Biden Administration in 2022 and was granted a commercial driver’s license by New York State caused a crash that killed Indiana National Guardsman Terry Frye. When the authorities tried to communicate with the foreign driver at the scene, they discovered that the driver could not speak English and required a translator, according to the Boone County Sheriff’s Office.
In October 2025, an illegal alien from Serbia and Montenegro driving a semi-truck on U.S. Highway 20 in Portage, Indiana, caused a multi-car accident that killed a 54-year-old. Despite being in the United States illegally since 2011, the driver owned two trucking companies that received over $36,000 in COVID-19 relief funding.
