Heartbroken Dad Slams California Democrats After a Crash With an Undocumented Driver Left His Daughter Disabled. “I Reject Your Sympathy,” He Told Congress.
- 5 years old Dalilah Coleman’s age on June 20, 2024, when a big-rig crash on Highway 395 in Adelanto, California, left her with a severe traumatic brain injury — Fox News / KGET
- 4 months time Dalilah spent without half of her skull after an emergency craniectomy, and six months hospitalized in total — Fox News
- 1,000,000+ driver’s licenses California has issued to undocumented residents since 2015 under AB 60 — the state licensing program under which the driver blamed for the crash later obtained his commercial license — CalMatters
- Aug. 29, 2025 the date ICE arrested the driver, Partap Singh, on an immigration warrant — 14 months after the crash, with no state criminal charge for the collision itself on the public record — KMPH / KGET
Marcus Coleman used to drive trucks for a living. He gave that up on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 395, in the dark, watching paramedics work to free his five-year-old daughter from the family’s car outside Adelanto, California. Fourteen months later, on September 1, 2026, he sat in front of a U.S. House committee in Washington and told the members who had invited him there that he did not want their sympathy.
The crash that changed his family’s life was, on its face, a routine six-vehicle pileup at a highway construction zone. What has turned it into a national policy fight is the paperwork behind the other driver — an undocumented immigrant from India, released into the United States in 2022, who months later walked out of a California DMV office with a valid commercial driver’s license.
The collision happened just after 12:30 a.m. on June 20, 2024, on U.S. Highway 395 at Calleja Road in Adelanto, San Bernardino County. According to the investigation into the crash, an 18-wheeler driven by Partap Singh was traveling at roughly 60 miles per hour and failed to stop for traffic already backed up at the construction zone, striking the vehicles ahead of it and triggering a chain-reaction pileup involving six vehicles. Investigators attributed fault for the crash to Singh, but no state criminal charge — vehicular manslaughter or otherwise — has been filed against him over the collision itself; the case that eventually put him in federal custody was built on his immigration status, not on how he drove that night.
Dalilah Coleman, five years old, was riding in one of the cars Singh’s truck struck. She suffered a traumatic brain injury severe enough that surgeons performed an emergency craniectomy, removing part of her skull to relieve swelling; she lived without it for four months, spent three weeks in a coma, and was hospitalized for six months total. Now seven, she has been diagnosed with diplegic cerebral palsy and global developmental delay. She is nonverbal, feeding-tube dependent, and relearning to walk with a wheelchair’s help. Her father, Marcus Coleman, stopped driving trucks himself to care for her full time.
Singh crossed the border illegally from India in October 2022 and was released into the United States under the Biden administration’s border processing at the time. He was issued a federal Employment Authorization Document, and on the strength of that document, the California DMV — operating under Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) — issued him a REAL ID-compliant commercial driver’s license after running his status through the federal SAVE system, the same verification database DMVs nationwide use to confirm work-authorization documents. California has run its non-legal-presence licensing program, Assembly Bill 60, since 2015; DMV figures compiled by CalMatters show the state has issued more than one million driver’s licenses under AB 60, across all license classes, in that span.
California’s broader immigration posture compounds the licensing question. Senate Bill 54, the 2017 “California Values Act” signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA), bars state and local law enforcement from using their resources to assist federal immigration enforcement absent a judicial warrant. Neither SB 54 nor AB 60 required any finding that Singh could safely operate an 18-wheeler; both required only that he hold documentation the state accepted for a license application. Singh remained a licensed truck driver on California roads for roughly 20 months between his entry and the crash, and for another 14 months after it, until ICE arrested him on an immigration warrant on August 29, 2025.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) — Has led California since 2019, spanning both the AB 60 licensing program and the crash. His press office has defended the state’s role, calling federal criticism of the CDL issuance “false and misleading” rather than announcing any change to the program.
Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) — Signed SB 54, the California Values Act, into law in 2017, establishing the state’s sanctuary posture that limits local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
California State Legislature — Democratic majority — Enacted and has maintained AB 60 since 2015 without restricting it to non-commercial license classes.
When DHS Secretary Kristi Noem (R) publicly blamed Newsom for issuing Singh’s commercial license, the governor’s press office pushed back hard, calling her claims “false and misleading.” Its statement argued that “the federal government issued the driver a federal work permit (and renewed it after the accident), making him eligible for a driver’s license — not only in California, but in any state.”
I am so grateful that the House Republicans passed Dalilah's Law out of Committee. What happened to Dalilah Coleman is a tragedy that could have been PREVENTED if California had not granted commercial driver's licenses to illegal aliens...
Dalilah, a caring and vivacious child, suffered critical, life changing injuries caused by an illegal alien driving an 18-wheeler. What happened to Dalilah Coleman is a tragedy, and it's one that could have been PREVENTED if California did not grant commercial driver's licenses to illegal aliens...
Newsom’s underlying fact is accurate: federal work authorization, not a state decision, made Singh eligible for a license anywhere in the country. But that federal-versus-state dispute does not answer the harder question critics are raising — California chose, through AB 60 and its sanctuary framework under SB 54, to make a commercial license available to an undocumented resident with no separate state-level screening for the class of vehicle involved. Both facts can be true: the federal permit opened the door, and California’s licensing program is what walked Singh through it.
President Trump raised the case by name during his February 2026 State of the Union address: “That’s why tonight, I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Dalilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.” Noem formally backed the proposal on February 25, 2026. Two companion bills followed: H.R. 7793, “The Dalilah Law,” introduced by Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) with Reps. Vince Fong (R-CA) and Jay Obernolte (R-CA); and the Senate’s “Dalilah’s Law Act,” introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) with Sens. Ted Budd (R-NC), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). Both bills would bar states from issuing commercial licenses to non-citizens, regardless of federal work-authorization status.
The bills have become the family’s public cause. Marcus Coleman has appeared repeatedly alongside lawmakers pushing the legislation, framing it as the one concrete change that could keep another family out of the position his is in — even as he has said, separately, that he does not want his daughter’s injury reduced to a talking point.
On September 1, 2026, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, chaired by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA-05), held a hearing titled “Sanctuary Policies, Tragic Consequences.” Coleman testified alongside Patricia Fox, the mother of a Colorado hit-and-run victim; Harford County, Maryland Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler; and Cato Institute immigration scholar David Bier, who offered an opposing view on federal immigration policy’s role in the case.
“I reject your guys' sympathy, to be honest with you. There's no way you guys are sorry. Not one of you guys have ever called me.”
Marcus Coleman, testifying to the House Judiciary Subcommittee, Sept. 1, 2026
Coleman told the committee he had tried to reach Newsom’s office directly in the aftermath of the crash. “When Dalilah’s accident first happened, I reached out to the governor’s office, via phone as well as email. I received nothing back at all,” he said. “We never did receive anything back from the governor.” He was equally direct about what he did not want from the hearing itself: “One thing that I don’t want is, I don’t want her accident, her tragedy, to become a political pivot point.”
Dalilah, a 5-year-old from California, was in a coma for 3 weeks because an illegal alien driving an 18-wheeler crashed into her family's car. Sanctuary state California gave the illegal alien a CDL...
A five-year-old girl suffered a permanently disabling brain injury in a crash caused by a driver who obtained a California commercial license under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s DMV, through a licensing program the state has run since 2015 without a legal-presence requirement. The driver has not been criminally charged for the crash and was ultimately detained on an immigration warrant, not a conviction. Newsom’s office is correct that federal work authorization made the license possible nationwide — but California’s own sanctuary and licensing framework is what put that license, and that truck, on Highway 395. Her father says no one from the governor’s office ever called.
