Thieves are stealing millions in cargo from American trucking companies every year, beleaguering an industry already reeling from a string of horrific highway crashes.
A pair of highway truck crashes, caused by Indian nationals who entered the country unlawfully, sparked national outrage over trucking regulations and prompted the Trump administration to issue sweeping restrictions on commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) for illegal migrants. Trucking experts point to a combination of mass illegal immigration and lax vetting procedures as the recipe that not only attracted unqualified migrant truckers, but also a significant uptick in freight thefts. (RELATED: GOP Lawmakers To Permanently Lock In Trump’s Crackdown On Illegal Migrant Truckers)
“The unprecedented influx of unvetted foreign individuals into our trucking industry has precipitated a national security crisis,” Shannon Everett, spokesperson for American Truckers United, said to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This surge in fraud and freight theft directly correlates with the introduction of non-domicile commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) issued to non-citizens.”
More than $16 million in cargo value was stolen in 2023 alone by motor carriers surveyed by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI). Thefts exploded from 1,850 in 2022 to just under 3,000 in 2023. Other industry observers have also confirmed the rise in cargo theft, with the American Trucking Associations reporting in June that strategic theft has mushroomed 1,500% since the first quarter of 2021.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 16: Cars and trucks move along the Cross Bronx Expressway. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The rise in cargo thefts coincides with the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis experienced under President Joe Biden, in which roughly 11 million border encounters took place from February 2021, Biden’s first full month in office, until December 2024, his last full month.
“The Biden-Harris Trucking Action Plan of 2021 unleashed a torrent of unvetted drivers from across the developing world,” Everett continued. “Consequently, when individuals enter the country illegally, obtain commercial driver’s licenses through illicit means, and operate from centralized hubs in sanctuary states, the nation becomes exposed to a wide array of national security risks — one of the most pressing being the ongoing escalation in cargo theft.”
The Trump administration has sought to arrest illegal migrant CDL holders, with immigration agents catching dozens of illegal foreign national truckers during a two-day operation off an Oklahoma highway in October. Deportation officers caught nearly 100 other illegal migrant truck drivers a month prior along the very same highway.
In several high-profile theft cases, cargo was allegedly stolen by the very truckers hired to move it.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department (SBSD) announced the arrest of 12 individuals earlier in October, which law enforcement dubbed the “Singh Organization,” presumably due to nearly every member carrying a Singh surname. The men are accused of running a years-long scheme in which they used trucking companies to bid on contracts and then stole the merchandise they were hired to move, ripping off millions in stolen goods.