With special guest Dalilah Coleman in the gallery during Tuesday’s State of the Union, President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass legislation named in her honor.
The Dalilah Law would bar all states from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Dalilah, now 7 years old, was left with a traumatic brain injury and other serious injuries after an illegal immigrant trucker caused a multi-car pileup in 2024.
On Wednesday, Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, took the first step and introduced the Dalilah Law to get illegal truckers off America’s roads.
Banks issued a news release outlining provisions of the law, including limiting commercial trucking licenses to United States citizens, lawful permanent residents, and certain work visa holders.
The law would also require states to revoke all CDLs currently issued to illegal immigrants and those with temporary status, whether or not they have work authorization. In addition, it would mandate that CDL knowledge and skills tests be offered in English only.
“Too many people have been hurt. Too many have been killed,” Banks said in news release and also shared on X details of the legislation. “Americans are paying the price because illegal drivers are being handed commercial driver’s licenses like candy and put behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks. That stops now. The Dalilah Law makes it clear: if you are here illegally, you do not get a CDL. We need to act and we need to act now.”
I just introduced the Dalilah Law that President Trump called for at last night’s State of the Union to stop illegal immigrants from getting trucking licenses. Too many Americans have been hurt or killed. We must act now! pic.twitter.com/2WLH766Aj9
— Senator Jim Banks (@SenatorBanks) February 25, 2026
Dalilah’s father, Marcus Coleman, has been a vocal advocate for his daughter, who was only 5 years old when a big rig slammed into her family’s car in June 2024. He appeared on Fox News following the State of the Union.
“It meant a lot to us, the fact that we were able to have Dalilah’s story heard, especially by the President, and get this initiative to move forward,” he said. “We’re trying to get this law into Congress just to protect the future kids that are out there and Americans all around.”
Her parents said “she is a miracle” and that “she’s here for a reason and God kept her here with us for a purpose. She has a purpose.”
The Trump administration has targeted unqualified foreign truckers with non-domiciled commercial drivers’ licenses—and the sanctuary states that issue them—in the wake of several traffic fatalities and alarming videos from across the country.
In one video, a half-naked California trucker, who couldn’t speak or understand English, was confronted by Arkansas police after parking on the shoulder.
In another viral video out of Indiana, a trucker saw an 18-wheeler coming at him the wrong way near a toll booth and forced the driver to stop. On the video, Tim O’Friel can be heard saying, “You have got to be f*cking kidding me.”
The proposed Dalilah Law legislation came as another disturbing video went viral on Wednesday. The footage shows a semi-truck going the wrong way for miles on a Missouri highway until the driver finds an access point to get on the correct side of the divided highway.
U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also shared the video on social media and confirmed that the foreign truck driver had a Minnesota-issued CDL and couldn’t read basic road signs.
“Thanks to Missouri law enforcement, this dangerous trucker is now out of service. @FMCSA is also investigating the carrier, Cargo Transportation LLC. We will not stop until America’s roads are safe again for families,” Duffy wrote on X.
In a follow-up post, Duffy shared a news clip where he discusses the extent of the problem due to the Biden administration’s open borders, sham CDL schools and states that aren’t properly vetting driver.
If you can’t pass a test to show you can understand English, you have no business driving an 40 TON truck on our roads. No exceptions.
Safety FIRST, America FIRST 🇺🇸 https://t.co/XvxVgC5PFp
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) February 27, 2026
Duffy said these foreign drivers “went to a sham school, they got a sham license, they’re not qualified. These are 80,000-pound big rigs and they’ve hit the road. And now we see because they don’t know how to drive, they’re actually killing Americans on these roads.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation is clamping down on the fake schools and illegal drivers by conducting nationwide audits of CDLs in sanctuary states and implementing rule changes.
On Feb. 11, Duffy issued a final rule to stop unqualified foreign drivers from obtaining licenses to drive commercial trucks and buses. In 2025, at least 17 fatal crashes and 30 deaths were caused by non-domiciled drivers who will now be ineligible to get a license.
The change closes two critical loopholes that allowed foreign drivers to obtain a CDL without states verifying their driving history, and a reliance on Employment Authorization Documents that resulted in more than 30 states illegally issuing tens of thousands of licenses to ineligible drivers.
In addition, Secretary Duffy signed an order last May announcing new guidelines to strengthen English language enforcement for commercial truck operators.
Drivers who cannot pass those proficiency tests will be place out-of-service, as was the case with the big-rig driver going the wrong way in Missouri.
Earlier this month, Duffy announced a new requirement that all CDL exams be administered exclusively in English, Fox Business reported.
“You take the test in English,” Duffy said at an event at the DOT headquarters in Washington, D.C. “You can’t speak English, you can’t read English — You’re not going to do well on the test.”
Duffy noted that several states, including California, currently offer CDL exams in multiple languages.
Besides introducing the Dalilah Law, Senator Banks has been vocal about concerns over issuing CDLs to foreign truck drivers after several fatalities in the Hoosier state.
Banks joined Brian Kilmeade on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” to discuss The Dalilah Law and what he calls a “national crisis.”
On Feb. 3, Bekzhan Beishekeev, a 30-year-old national of Kyrgyzstan, swerved into oncoming traffic on an Indiana highway and collided head-on with a van carrying Amish construction workers, killing four people and injuring others. He was arrested by ICE two days after the crash and had obtained a CDL in Pennsylvania
“How many times are we going to see this same story happen again? Banks said in a statement after a fatality near Indianapolis on Feb. 18. “This is a national crisis! I am sick of it.”
Last week, Senator Banks sent a letter to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek Barrs for an immediate investigation into potential “chameleon carrier” trucking networks operating in Indiana.
He also recently launched the TruckSafe tipline, allowing those in the trucking industry to report concerns about carriers employing illegal immigrants.
President Trump invited Bakersfield, Calif., resident Marcus Coleman and his daughter, Dalilah Coleman, to attend the State of the Union and introduced them during the address.
The young girl was airlifted from the scene and suffered severe head trauma. Dalilah experienced a broken femur, skull fractures, and was in a coma for three weeks.
While in the hospital, she had a craniectomy and was without half of her skull for four months. She has since been diagnosed with diplegic cerebral palsy and global developmental delay.
The driver involved in the crash remained free for more than a year in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California—the same state that gave him a commercial driver’s license.
Partap Singh, an illegal immigrant from India, was arrested Aug. 29, 2025, in Fresno, Calif., by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Singh illegally crossed the southern border in October 2022 and was released into the country by the Biden Administration.
Dalilah’s parents also spoke to Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” following Singh’s arrest.
Coleman said the driver had just turned 20 around the time of the accident, and California allows people to get a Class A CDL at 18 years old if you drive in the state. The state never pursued any charges against him for the fiery crash.
Coleman reached out to Newsom’s office multiple times about the accident but never received any response from him.
“We never received a call back. We never received ‘the governor’s going to look into this,’” Coleman told Fox News.
Marcus Coleman, who wasn’t involved in the accident, said there was road construction on the highway and several vehicles were at a complete stop. Singh’s semi-truck failed to stop, smashed the vehicle Dalilah was in first, and proceeded to strike four other vehicles.
The California Highway Patrol Traffic Crash Report stated that Singh drove at an unsafe speed and failed to stop for traffic and a construction zone. Several other individuals were also transported to hospitals for injuries.
