The phone vibrated just as Arash Singh curled onto a mattress in the sleeper cab of his semi truck parked in a lot off Interstate 5 in Northern California. As on most evenings, his parents were calling at the start of their day in a tiny village in Punjab, India.
“It’s winter almost. Please always wear a coat,” his mother gently implored on the video call. Mr. Singh nodded into the glow of the screen, before receiving their prayers.
His parents, followers of the Sikh faith, asked God to protect their son on his drive of more than 1,000 miles from Pasco, Wash., to Oxnard, Calif. Seventeen hours, if traffic was light.
“I will be safe,” Mr. Singh assured his mother.
It was an assurance the 25-year-old long-haul truck driver had given himself during his most stressful days on the road. Since coming to the United States a few years ago, Mr. Singh has navigated the perils of America’s highways: the drivers who veer into his lane while texting, ice storms in the Midwest, fellow truckers whose gazes linger on his turban.
“As an immigrant driver,” he said, “there is plenty you always must think about.”
Mr. Singh has had more on his mind these days than he would like. Driving a truck is a solitary job, but Sikhs suddenly feel very much in the public eye. While estimates vary, around a quarter of Sikh adults in the United States work in the trucking industry, according to the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, which advocates for Sikh truckers, and they are concentrated on the West Coast. Two fatal crashes since August involving Sikh truck drivers led to increased scrutiny by the Trump administration, which escalated a crackdown on immigrant drivers that had begun with new English-proficiency guidelines in the spring. Those crashes killed six people; one driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter and the other with both vehicular manslaughter and vehicular homicide.
After the first crash, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said foreign drivers without proper training or licenses were a longstanding problem. About 200,000 foreign drivers hold licenses that allow them to drive commercial vehicles. Mr. Duffy issued rules that would make it much harder for many immigrants to drive, amid ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and persistent verbal attacks from President Trump on immigrants.
“We have a government system designed to keep American families on the road safe,” Mr. Duffy said when announcing the rules. “But that system has been compromised.”
Commercial drivers’ licenses are issued by states, and Mr. Duffy threatened to withhold $160 million in highway funds from California, where the second crash occurred in October, if the state did not immediately identify and revoke improperly issued commercial licenses. An audit by his department found that more than 25 percent of those licenses in California were faulty, including licenses that were valid long after a driver’s work permit had expired. California law requires that commercial licenses for noncitizens expire on or before the expiration date of any work permits, according to state officials.
In response, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told at least 17,000 truck drivers that their licenses were being revoked.
On the highways, Sikh drivers, who often wear distinctive turbans, have faced increased harassment since the crashes, said Raman Dhillon, chief executive of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association. His organization, too, has received hate-filled emails in recent months.
“You and your raggedy, reckless drivers need to go back to India,” read one. “You people need to get out of trucking,” said another.
“Everyone is not over here illegally and making mistakes and making the roads less safe,” said Mr. Dhillon, a former truck driver.
Mr. Singh had heard about all the political fuss from other drivers, but he still felt a heaviness when he opened an email on his phone one afternoon in early November.
“We regret to inform you,” it read, “that the D.M.V. will cancel your commercial driver’s license 60 days from the date of this letter.” Mr. Singh had followed the rules in applying for a temporary work permit and commercial license, but to keep his license, according to the letter, he now needed to provide “legal presence documents that meet new federal guidelines,” such as proof of permanent residency or citizenship. He had neither.
Since seeking asylum in the United States in 2022, Mr. Singh has clocked tens of thousands of miles hauling his 53-foot trailer. He has seen more of the United States through the windshield of his 18-wheeler than he had seen of his home country.
“Right now, I am stuck,” he said. “I want to work.”
Not long after he received the letter, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed the federal rules.
For now, at least, Mr. Singh could remain on the road.
‘It’s Just What We as Sikhs Do’
The Sikh entry into American trucking began in the 1980s.
Some followers of Sikhism, a minority religion whose adherents are concentrated in Punjab, India, have long pushed for a separate state. In 1984, tens of thousands of Sikhs began fleeing after a deadly dayslong Indian military operation against Sikh separatists and later anti-Sikh riots in the country. Fearing for their lives, many Sikhs joined relatives who had immigrated decades earlier to work the fields in the rich agricultural land of California’s Central Valley.
As American truckers retired, many of the recent transplants filled the void. Today, around 150,000 Sikhs work in the trucking industry in the United States.
For a long time, Dave Laut was one of them.
He arrived in California from Punjab in 2004 and joined his uncle, who was working as a driver.
“It’s just what we as Sikhs do in this country,” Mr. Laut, 47, said.
For years, he transported produce from the Central Valley to the East Coast. The relentless schedule on the road was exhausting. Slowly, he started buying trucks and hiring drivers while working out of his apartment. He got married, had children and started his business, managing other drivers who, like him, had emigrated from India in their 20s.
He now runs a company called FBT in Bakersfield, an agriculture and oil-drilling city two hours north of Los Angeles. These days, his company employs around 380 drivers, more than 60 percent of them from Punjab. It has become a common migration pattern.
But since California began notifying drivers of revoked licenses, Mr. Laut said, he has lost more than 50 drivers. Many of them, he said, fear that immigration officials will stop them at truck stops or along interstates.
“These are great drivers, no accidents, but they are being targeted,” he said on a recent morning from his company’s headquarters, where idling trucks hummed on the 10-acre lot.
Mr. Laut gained his citizenship in 2010 and six years later cast his first presidential vote for Donald J. Trump. He liked Mr. Trump because he was also a businessman and voted for him twice more.
During the president’s first term, Mr. Laut thought the economy was strong and the country focused on lifting up workers. Now, he said, the administration appears to be going after the blue-collar workers who voted Mr. Trump into office.
“Of course, if a driver is unsafe, he should be off the roads,” Mr. Laut said. “But that’s not the case for most drivers.”
The Department of Transportation crackdown is a frequent topic among Sikh drivers on weekends at Mr. Laut’s gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship.
“Everyone wants answers,” he said. “But we have few.”
In November, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, joined more than a dozen other Democratic state attorneys general on a letter to Mr. Duffy. It argued that the proposed rules would disrupt the delivery of food, operation of construction equipment and other essential services, “raising costs and disrupting economic and other important activity across the nation.”
Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations, the industry’s largest trade association, supports the proposed changes.
“If you are here illegally, you cannot have a commercial driver’s license. Period,” Mr. Spear said in a written statement.
The rules would also affect drivers who are legally in the country with pending asylum claims or temporary protected status. Even so, Mr. Spear said, those drivers pose a risk because it is difficult to obtain driving records from their home countries.
In 2021, the American Trucking Associations claimed the country needed 80,000 more drivers. But Mr. Spear said that shortage had largely evaporated. Recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that employment of truck drivers has increased around 15 percent since the pandemic. Fatalities from truck crashes last year declined about 11 percent from 2023, according to federal data.
“This is not about anyone’s background,” Mr. Spear said in the statement. “It’s about safety and compliance.”
But that’s not how Manpreet Kaur, a member of Bakersfield’s City Council, sees it.
“Trucking has now become an immigration issue, not a true safety issue,” said Ms. Kaur, who comes from a Sikh trucking family.
“People are scared,” Ms. Kaur said, “and this is yet another immigrant community being targeted.”
A Lonely Road
Mr. Singh clutched the wheel as he drove through miles of dense fog in Northern California. He was nearing the midway point of hauling 15 pallets of potatoes from Pasco to Oxnard.
Before the crashes, he drove across the country, heading east along Interstates 10 and 40. But these days, he avoids states, like Texas and Oklahoma, where he fears being stopped and questioned about his immigration status. Now, he mostly drives up and down the West Coast.
As he drove, Mr. Singh, slender and bookish, talked about his typical routine on the road. He starts most mornings with a cappuccino from Starbucks. To pass the time, he listens to audiobooks about Sikh history or calls a fellow long hauler to chat from his hands-free headset. He listens to his favorite Punjabi rapper, Sidhu Moose Wala, or his new favorite band, Guns N’ Roses.
He keeps the refrigerator in his cabin packed with rice and grilled vegetables from home, but sometimes stops at Indian spots catering to Punjabi truckers. On his rearview mirror hangs a photo of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh religious leader and militant killed in the operation in 1984.
Life on the road can be lonely — meals eaten alone, missed birthdays of relatives back in India. Recently, his father, who is saved in his phone as Dad with an accompanying red heart emoji, sent him a video from a Diwali celebration, and Mr. Singh played it on repeat.
“Every day, I miss my home, but it’s better here,” he said. “I can work and support my family. It’s safer for me here.”
He left Punjab in 2020, fearful he would be targeted by the Indian government. He supports creating a separate Sikh state, something the Indian government strongly opposes. He moved to London, where he worked in construction and improved his English.
In 2022, Mr. Singh flew to Mexico City, then made his way to the U.S. border. He crossed into Southern California and requested asylum, part of a huge influx of immigrants during the Biden administration.
After more than a month in detention, including at a facility in Mississippi, Mr. Singh was released to await an asylum hearing. A family friend in California took him in. He eventually got his work permit and, while studying to get a commercial driver’s license, lived in San Francisco and worked as a waiter at an Indian restaurant.
Once he got his license in 2023, Mr. Singh started with a small trucking company. He saved money and, with a loan, bought his own truck. He makes truck payments of $2,000 a month. On this trip from Washington State, Mr. Singh said, he expected to make about $2,800 before fuel expenses.
The rest of his paycheck goes via MoneyGram to his family in India and to rent a room in a five-bedroom house in Bakersfield that he shares with other drivers from Punjab.
While he still wears his turban on weekends when he attends a Sikh house of worship in Bakersfield, Mr. Singh no longer wears it behind the wheel. The head wrap, he said, gets glares from other drivers on the road. He doesn’t like to do anything that draws extra attention.
He is often struck by the homeless encampments near highways. He knows that if he is unable to drive, he will be saddled with a truck loan he cannot pay off and limited work options.
As his truck barreled south down Interstate 5, Mr. Singh took the exit at Lost Hills to stop at one of his favorite Punjabi food trucks.
At a diesel pump, two drivers headed to Seattle filled up their tanks.
“You get the letter, brother?” Mr. Singh asked one.
“Yes, and him, too,” the driver said, gesturing to a trucker on the other side of the lot. “What are we supposed to do?”
Mr. Singh did not have an answer. He just wanted to grab a quick bite and get back on the road.
Kurtis Lee is an economics correspondent based in Los Angeles who focuses on the lives and livelihoods of everyday Americans. He has written about economic inequality for a decade.
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