An illegal immigrant truck driver accused of causing a fatal semi-truck crash in Indiana reportedly owned companies that raked in taxpayer money before the crash.
A Fox News report on Thursday gave more details about the suspect, identified as Borko Stankovic, who was involved in the wreck on October 15 that left one person dead.
“PPP records cataloged by ProPublica show that two of Stankovic’s companies, Eclipse Trucking Inc. and ESD Team Inc., received a combined $36,082 in loans from the COVID-19 era funding program. Business registration records from both Illinois and Indiana show Stankovic owned both companies,” the outlet said.
The man is accused of having a suspended Illinois CDL that belonged to a relative, but no valid CDL with his name on it.
Stankovic was on U.S. Highway 20 when traffic stopped due to a Ram Sprinter turning. However, the suspect allegedly made a hard left turn and entered opposite traffic, hitting a Subaru Crosstrek.
“The semi-truck jackknifed as a result and hit the Ram Sprinter, which was pushed into a road sign. Jeffrey Eberly, 54, who was driving the Subaru, died at the scene, officials said,” the Fox article said.
In a press release Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the suspect had been in the United States illegally since early 2011 when his nonimmigrant visa status expired, noting he had previously been arrested in New York for resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration.
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, “This senseless tragedy should NEVER have happened, and this man should still be alive today. Stankovic has been in this country ILLEGALLY since 2011 and has a history of violating the law, yet he remained free to continue engaging in dangerous behavior that ultimately resulted in the death of Jeffrey Eberly. Illegal aliens have no business operating 18 wheelers or semi-trucks on America’s highways. President Trump and Secretary Noem are making America’s roads safe again.”
Meanwhile, officials have identified another suspected illegal semi-truck driver behind an eight-car accident in Ontario, California, as Jashanpreet Singh, who is an illegal alien from India, Breitbart News reported Wednesday.
Sources told Fox News’s Bill Melugin the suspect had been “caught and released” at the California border under former President Joe Biden’s administration in early 2022.
The Breitbart News article noted the it was an “alleged DUI-related crash.”
Another illegal trucker, identified as Harjidner Singh who is accused of killing three Americans while making an illegal U-turn in Florida, failed an English proficiency test and was unable to accurately identify highway traffic signs after the crash, per Breitbart News.
Advocates for American truckers say President Joe Biden’s policies created a huge black market in the trucking sector by giving Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDL) to a huge bulge of illegal and quasi-legal migrants.
This regulatory vacuum allows them to snatch contracts from professional American drivers and established companies, he told Breitbart News. But the huge damage created by the black market becomes a public hazard when the migrants doze off while driving long hours, and then smash into Americans at full speed, Everett said.
On the West Coast, the trucking black market relies heavily on Sikhs from India. On the East Coast, the market relies on visiting migrants from Eastern Europe. In many cases, the migrants pose as tourists to get through airport customs checks prior to several months of driving.
American truckers refer to the East European migrant drivers as “Strong Solo Sergey,” Everett told Breitbart News.
Insurance companies should change their rules to recognize the economic damage caused by the black market trucking industry, Everett said:
When you have one of these nefarious trucking companies, and they do that kind of the damage, they just shut down and they disappear, and everybody’s left holding the bag. The way that [Transportation Secretary Sean] Duffy could curtail all of this is to ensure the real party is responsible for the crashes: The broker who gave that trucking company the load, which used a… [tourist visa] truck driver [to transport the cargo], should not be protected from civil liability.
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