An American Tragedy That Doesn't Actually Involve Any Americans . . . This Time

A "red meat" story that turns out to raise more questions than it answers.

So if you read Saturday’s post, you know I wasn’t much interested in this story. Sad to say but “illegal immigrant does something that results in death of others” has become way too common.

It is a “red meat” story, that’s true, and while I like red meat in the physical world, there’s so much of it in the online world that I’d rather not most of the time.

But a reader (Joy/Sorrow) suggested I look into it, and what I found was so much more interesting than “red meat.”

So there’s a wreck in Florida. The basics go like this . . .

• Man attempts u-turn on the Florida Turnpike with a semitruck and trailer.

• Minivan carrying three people smashes into the side.

• Minivan’s occupants die.

Now this was described to me as an illegal immigrant killing three legal immigrants.

That is and is not true.

The driver came here illegally, but was allowed to claim asylum by the Trump administration. Yes, you read that right.

Harjinder Singh crossed the southern border into California in September 2018 and was processed for fast-track deportation by the first Trump administration, police sources told The Post.

But after claiming fear of being sent back to India to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Singh was released on a $5,000 immigration bond in January 2019 and has remained in immigration proceedings ever since.

So technically, he’s not here illegally. He’s not in hiding. He made an asylum claim that the first Trump administration accepted at least temporarily.

But it was Biden’s administration that gave him a work permit. This is what is known as a “bipartisan” tragedy. (I shouldn’t joke, I know. People are dead. Sorry.)

In June 2021, the Biden administration granted him work papers that had been denied during Trump’s first term, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday.

He was then able to secure a Commercial Driver’s License in California, according to DHS.

And because Trump allowed him to apply for asylum and Biden gave him a work permit and California gave him a CDL even though he couldn’t speak English, this happened . . .

Now interestingly, it took a while for the victims to be identified. At first they were just described as from X place in Florida. But that wasn’t quite the whole truth.

The driver Herby Dufresne, 30, and passengers Faniola Joseph, 27, and Rodrigue Dor, 53, all Haitian immigrants, were in their minivan when it plowed into the side of an 18-wheeler driven by Harjinder Singh, an immigrant from India, on Aug. 12, the Miami Herald reported.

Dufresne arrived in Miami in December 2023 from Port-au-Prince and was given a two-year permit to live and work in the US after obtaining a financial sponsor under a Biden-era program, the outlet reported, citing a friend of the victim.

Three people were killed after the crash in St. Lucie County on Aug. 12.St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office

No information was provided on Joseph and Dor’s arrival or immigration status other than that they previously lived in Florida, the Miami Herald reported.

So Singh made an asylum claim and Dufresne ended up here through the Humanitarian Parole program, which allowed 30,000 people a month from various countries in crisis.

So rather like asylum, though he was supposedly “vetted.” (Now how you “vet” someone from Haiti when there is no one to really ask for official records, I don’t know, but there you have it.)

I’m not sure why you would characterize Singh as an “illegal” and Dufresne as a “legal,” other than Dufresne sort of called ahead with no chance of denial and Singh actually crossed the border.

But I suggest there is a bit of “framing” at work. We must keep a certain narrative going.

The one thing that really had me curious though was this . . .

You see, Florida allowed Singh to leave. They didn’t charge him right away.

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday defended Florida law enforcement for letting semi-truck driver Harjinder Singh leave the state after apparently causing a traffic accident that killed three people here. . . .

“It wasn’t obvious to the troopers at the time that there was a criminal offense that had been committed,” DeSantis said, answering a question about why Singh was allowed to leave the scene of the crash and fly back to California.

The money quote?

“The witnesses were dead,” he added.

Um, not sure what to say to that.

I mean, the point is that they are in fact dead. If they were standing on the side of the road screaming, “You asshole,” I think this would be a different story.

I expressed a similar sentiment to my husband and showed him a video of the crash that was easier to see.

And he noticed something I didn’t.

Granted it happens fast and the angle is lousy, but as the other half said, there are no brake lights on the minivan. In fact, it hits the trailer so hard, it looks like it actually pushes and rocks it.

There are no apparent skid marks. Not in the picture above nor in this report from the local news.

There were, as Ron DeSantis said, no witnesses. So did whoever saw it not stop? Hard to believe given the fact that the crash covered the whole road. Or was there really nobody else around at the time of the crash?

And that got me to thinking. You drive; I drive. We’re always on the lookout for people doing stupid things because we know people. As my husband says, people get behind the wheel of a vehicle and they lose their damn minds. So you’re always on the offensive.

So no one is around and yet somehow Dufresne doesn’t notice this lumbering vehicle doing something weird up ahead?

I know the road gets eaten up quickly at interstate speeds but that truck pulled off on the shoulder of the northbound lane, turned across the two lanes of traffic, and had made it to the inner emergency lane of the southbound lane.

That takes time.

Actually, quite a bit of time.

So no witnesses, no one around, but still Dufresne doesn’t even seem to have time to notice the truck.

So I thought, “Well, the terrain had to be blocking Dufresne’s view.”

But I wanted to be sure, so I went looking.

So . . . this is where Lillia finds out that locating a single mile marker through Google is a nightmare that will eat hours of your life.

But find it I did. This is the “authorized access only” at Mile Marker 170.5 on the Florida Turnpike (the only “authorized access only” I found between Mile Marker 169 and 171, so it has to be it, and the terrain is similar). This would be looking south, so that the truck and minivan would be headed toward us on the other side. See how flat and straight it is?

Here is heading north, the direction the truck and minivan would have been going. (The picture is actually older than the one the link leads to because in the newest version, they’re doing roadwork and have the access blocked off.)

If you want to look at a ground-level view yourself, click this link. (Hey, something about Google maps is user friendly. Who knew?)

Are you noticing what I’m noticing?

I can see why the police didn’t arrest the driver right away. In order to run into that truck like that minivan did, he’d have to be hauling ass or completely blind or not paying a bit of attention at all.

Or he’d have to have done something stupid like like swung around another vehicle and hit the gas, not knowing the truck was right there.

But then there would be a witness, and possible another vehicle in the accident.

I live in critter country. If you see someone braking for what seems like no reason, you get quickly suspicious and slow down yourself. So if there was another vehicle, like another semi, that blocked the view of Singh’s truck, Dufresne would have had to ignore all the warning signals and just went around and slammed on the gas and gone hellbent for leather without looking ahead.

But he’d have to have done this far enough back that the second vehicle managed to avoid crashing into Singh’s truck as well.

Do you see the problem?

I won’t say that Dufresne had to be trying to hit the truck, but he had to make a lot of unwise choices.

And then I remembered a little story from last campaign season . . .

How predictable for the Guardian. Burying the lede.

For years, longtime Springfield residents have shown up at city council meetings to complain to authorities about how Haitian drivers were allegedly driving dangerously around the town. Stories emerged of people, allegedly Haitians, accidentally driving into church buildings. Others were blamed for accidents causing deaths and at one point last year, as many as 2,300 Haitians were thought to be driving without licenses in Springfield’s Clark county.

The tragic death of an 11-year-old student whose school bus was hit by a Haitian man driving without a valid license in August 2023, played a major role in Haitians becoming a target for a national debate on immigration during last year’s presidential election campaign.

But recent months have seen significant efforts under way to solve an issue that has been used to shape the Trump administration’s drastic immigration policies.

Ah, yes, the problem is not that we had a bunch of Haitians who can’t drive running around getting in accidents and hurting and killing people, but that the issue was used by the Trump administration.

But this leads to a question I couldn’t find an answer to, for perhaps obvious reasons (who would even ask?): Did Herby Dufresne have a valid driver’s license? Meaning was he a licensed driver who had jumped through all the hoops to prove he should be on the road?

Given the experience of Springfield, Ohio, one wonders.

So let’s tie this all together . . .

We have an Indian man who shouldn’t be in the country to begin with, but Trump’s administration allows him to file for asylum and Biden’s admin gives him a work permit. Even though he couldn’t speak English and couldn’t read road signs, he got a commercial driver’s license in California and someone hired him.

He makes an illegal U-Turn on the Florida Turnpike and in the process he is hit by a Haitian and his two Haitian companions in a minivan, here legally yes but coming in during Biden’s era when the borders were merely suggestions. Judging from the video and a google search of the landscape and basic common sense, one has to wonder how he hit the truck. He had to be driving almost or as recklessly as the man who was driving the truck.

And I’m not sure what to think about all this except for the following: when we say we want people to assimilate to the American culture, we’re not talking about listening to Alan Jackson and eating barbecue and McDonald’s or learning to dance the Funky Chicken. We’re talking about exercising the basics of American existence: knowing English enough to read road signs, thinking the rules apply to you too (perhaps even a little more so since you’re not on your home turf), and having a general respect for the well-being of other people.

But neither the driver of the truck nor the driver of the minivan had done these things, seemingly.

The driver could have been in shock, but he just obviously did something that resulted in a death.

I’d have to be sedated, even if it wasn’t my fault. Most people would.

Nope, he’s standing there cool as a cucumber.

It’s almost like he doesn’t understand the ramifications of what has just happened, even though people are dead and he’s likely headed to jail. (To be fair, I’ve read about driving in India. It sounds like the daily commute could be streamed as reality TV version of “Traffic Survivor.”)

And the Haitian driver. What was he doing that he didn’t see the truck acting strangely and crossing the road in time to stop. It’s not like he was beside the truck. That would have been an entirely different wreck. So it’s hard to see how he did not have time if he was being any kind of careful driver to at least try to avoid the accident.

If he was that reckless, would he himself at some point caused an accident?

It’s not that I’m going to pretend that Americans would never find themselves in this situation. Americans are idiots behind the wheel too.

But it’s the same argument as with crime: it’s a unique kind of insult when you allow people into the country and they thumb their nose at your laws and your social mores. Most of the time, that’s a mere annoyance.

But sometimes it ends tragically.

This was one of those times.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is such an “America in 2025” story, especially since no Americans were involved. And it’s something we should be outraged about all the way around.

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I have my thoughts, obviously, but what are yours?