Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael E. Pahira Jr. was conducting a routine commercial vehicle inspection on the shoulder of Interstate 81 in Schuylkill County on July 1 when a semi-truck left the roadway, struck his marked patrol vehicle, and hit him. Both trucks caught fire. Pahira, a 44-year-old, 20-year veteran of the Pennsylvania State Police, was trapped beneath the burning wreckage. He died at a local hospital.
The man charged with killing him, Michael Bon, a 33-year-old Haitian national, should not have been in the country, let alone behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler.
Bon entered the United States in July 2024 under the Biden administration's humanitarian parole program. The Department of Homeland Security denied his application for Temporary Protected Status and terminated his parole in June 2025, ordering him removed. He refused to leave. Yet while living in Brockton, Massachusetts, he held a non-domiciled commercial driver's license, one that Massachusetts renewed in February 2026, a full month before the Trump administration directed states to stop issuing or renewing those licenses for ineligible drivers. Bon now faces charges of homicide by vehicle, involuntary manslaughter, reckless driving, and six additional lesser counts. He is being held on $700,000 bail.
Trooper Pahira's death is not an isolated case. It is the latest in a grim string of fatal crashes involving noncitizen commercial truck drivers who obtained CDLs through a licensing system riddled with gaps. Fox News Digital documented at least seven deadly incidents over roughly a year, each one raising the same set of questions about how these drivers got credentialed and why they were still on the road.
In July 2025, Harjinder Singh, a 28-year-old illegal immigrant from India, allegedly attempted an illegal U-turn on Florida's Turnpike, triggering a crash that killed three people, including Clarence Nelson, a 76-year-old assistant basketball coach at Pomona High School, and his wife Lisa, 69. Florida authorities charged Singh with three counts of vehicular homicide.
Singh's licensing history alone should alarm anyone who shares a highway with commercial trucks. A senior official at the Florida Attorney General's office said Singh failed the CDL knowledge exam ten times and the air brakes knowledge exam twice before Washington state finally issued him a license. The trucking company that trained him also certified he could speak English, a federal requirement, despite evidence to the contrary. Body camera footage from a New Mexico traffic stop showed Singh struggling to communicate with a state trooper after being pulled over for allegedly driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone. He failed post-crash English-language and road sign proficiency tests.
California later issued him another CDL.
The list keeps growing. In December 2025, Kamalpreet Singh, an Indian national who crossed into the U.S. illegally in December 2023, allegedly rear-ended a stopped vehicle in Washington state, crushing it between two trucks and killing 29-year-old Robert B. Pearson. Border Patrol agents had apprehended Kamalpreet Singh at the border and released him into the country. He was charged with vehicular homicide and released on a $100,000 bond.
In February 2026, two more fatal crashes in Indiana drew federal attention. Singh Sukhdeep, an Indian national in the country illegally who received an Indiana CDL in May 2025, was charged after investigators accused him of running a red light and killing 64-year-old Terry Schultz. Separately, Bekzhan Beishekeev, a Kyrgyzstani national, was taken into ICE custody after investigators alleged his semi-truck crossed the center line in Jay County and collided head-on with a passenger van, killing four people, including members of an Amish community.
In May 2026, federal officials accused Manvir Singh, an illegal immigrant from India, of causing a deadly multi-vehicle hit-and-run crash near Lodi, California, that killed two people. He allegedly fled on foot.
And on October 21, 2025, a Department of Transportation review concluded that Jashanpreet Singh, a 21-year-old Indian national, never should have been issued a California CDL. He was driving a big rig involved in a crash that killed three people. The DOT blamed failures in the state's licensing system.
Days after Trooper Pahira's death, another fatal crash underscored the same failures. On Sunday, July 5, Bekhzod Asrarov, a 42-year-old Uzbek national who entered the U.S. legally during the Biden administration on a visa, was arrested in Madison County, Ohio, after his semi-truck allegedly rear-ended a vehicle, killing 21-year-old Tobias "Toby" Forsythe.
Forsythe was a UMass Lowell soccer player, a goalkeeper and economics major who had transferred to the River Hawks after playing at Ashland University and Shawnee State. He was twenty-one years old.
Asrarov held an Ohio CDL. But when Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers arrived at the scene, he could not communicate with them in English. They resorted to Google Translate. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Asrarov failed an English-language proficiency test administered after the crash. Investigators also alleged Asrarov attempted to remove and conceal his truck's dashboard camera before trying to destroy it, along with three cellphones and his electronic logging device.
At the center of this disaster is the non-domiciled CDL, a license category that allowed individuals without permanent legal status to obtain commercial driving credentials from states that chose to issue them. The Trump administration moved to close this loophole, barring states from issuing or renewing non-domiciled CDLs for ineligible drivers. The Department of Transportation also restored enforcement of federal English-language proficiency requirements, tightened eligibility rules for foreign truckers, and increased roadside enforcement. By May 1, 2026, more than 28,000 CDLs had been revoked.
But the reforms came after a body count had already accumulated. Massachusetts renewed Michael Bon's CDL months after DHS ordered him removed. Washington state handed Harjinder Singh a license after he failed the knowledge exam ten times. California credentialed a driver its own federal review later said should never have been licensed.
The question is not whether the federal government acted. It did. The question is why state licensing agencies operated for years with so little regard for the safety of the people sharing the road with 80,000-pound trucks.
Lewie Pugh, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, has pushed for higher standards for decades. He did not mince words about what went wrong.
"We've lowered and lowered and lowered the standards in trucking over the last 40 years because of a false narrative about a driver shortage."
Pugh said the industry has prioritized cheap labor over public safety, noting that some commercial driving schools can turn out newly licensed drivers in as little as 24 hours. He called it a system that puts "profits over people and profits over highway safety."
On the English-language requirement, Pugh was equally direct, as Just the News reported:
"When you're on the highway in an emergency, you don't have time to be using a translation service. You need to be able to tell law enforcement or first responders what's going on."
OOIDA supports legislation introduced by Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., that would establish a federal minimum behind-the-wheel training requirement for commercial drivers. Senate Republicans have also introduced legislation to strengthen English-language proficiency requirements. Pugh's organization backs efforts to codify the Trump administration's restrictions on non-domiciled CDLs into law, a step that would prevent a future administration from quietly reversing them.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro called Pahira's death "a horrific and terrible tragedy," adding that he and his wife "are praying for the PA State Police family and our local law enforcement partners after losing another one of their own." A Massachusetts RMV spokesperson said the agency mourns Pahira and that "our thoughts are with his loved ones and fellow troopers."
Shannon Everett, a spokesman for American Truckers United, was more pointed. Everett called the crash proof of "the deadly risks of lax licensing" and demanded Congress pass legislation, referred to as Dalilah's Law, "to revoke all improperly issued non-domiciled CDLs, enforce English proficiency, and ensure only qualified, legal drivers operate on our roads."
The victims in these cases were not abstractions. They were a 20-year veteran trooper who had moved home to care for his mother. A retired couple from Southern California. A 21-year-old college goalkeeper. A 64-year-old man who happened to stop at a red light. Members of an Amish community in rural Indiana. A 29-year-old in Washington state whose car was crushed between two trucks.
Each one died beneath the wheels of a truck driven by someone who either should not have been in the country, should not have held a license, or both.
Several questions still hang over these cases. Was Bon's Massachusetts CDL still technically valid at the time of the July 1 crash, or had the Trump administration's directive already invalidated it? What specific charges, if any, has Ohio filed against Asrarov? Will any state licensing officials face accountability for issuing credentials to drivers who failed basic competency tests or lacked legal status?
And the largest question of all: how many more improperly licensed drivers are still on the road right now?
The federal government revoked more than 28,000 CDLs. That number tells you the scale of the problem. It also tells you how long the system operated without anyone in charge caring enough to count.
