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The Beginning of Bad Things with Big Trucks to Come

Author: Renee E. Taylor
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: January 14, 2007





Currently, jurors are deliberating the fate of Tyrone Williams, the truck driver who abandoned 75 illegal immigrants in his unventilated trailer in the unbearable Texas heat in the summer of 2002 – 19 of them died. It would seem the trucking industry would do everything in its power to make sure such a horrific incident would never happen again. But as Renee E. Taylor shows, the industry has not only done nothing to crack down on truckers who smuggle people into the United States, they have actually taken numerous steps to make such human trafficking easier.





The Beginning of Bad Things with Big Trucks to Come

Renee E. Taylor



Smugglers and Coyotes



Jurors in Houston are pondering the fate of Schenectady, New York, truck driver Tyrone Williams, convicted of 58 counts of conspiracy, harboring and transporting illegal aliens, including 20 counts that were death-penalty-eligible. In the now infamous 2003 smuggling attempt, seventy illegal aliens were packed into Williams' unventilated trailer. As the sweltering South Texas heat intensified the extreme temperature in the trailer, 19 of the illegal aliens died.



The use of truckers to smuggle illegal aliens across the Mexican border into the United States is nothing new. "Coyotes,” as the human smugglers are known, set up the transactions between would-be illegal immigrants and truck drivers willing to transport them to various parts of the country. There is a large pay-out to the trucker willing to take the risk.



Truck drivers Troy Dock and Jason Sprague now sit in the Grayson County Jail in Sherman, Texas, for their roles in the July 2002 deaths of two illegal aliens smuggled in the trailer of their eighteen wheeler. Unlike Williams, who was an independent owner/operator, Dock and Sprague worked for Boyd Logistics, Inc, in El Paso, Texas. Dock, who had planned to send money back to his wife's family in Mexico, and Sprague, who had been affiliated in the past with known El Paso coyote Ruben Patrick Valdez, used a legitimate load of medical supplies headed to the Midwest as an opportunity to smuggle in a group of illegal immigrants.



The Language Barrier



It is not uncommon for immigrants to obtain commercial drivers' licenses and employment in the trucking industry. Often, they cannot speak English well enough to conduct simple business transactions, such as purchasing fuel. Truck stops frequently employ Spanish speaking fuel desk clerks, making it easier for the immigrant not to have to learn English.



The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is the agency which, theoretically, enforces their own Safety Rules and Regulations for truck drivers. However, FMCSA Regulation 391.11 clearly states that in order to be qualified legally to operate an eighteen wheeler in the interstate transportation of goods one must: speak and understand English well enough to conduct daily business, complete the necessary reports and respond to official inquiries. The fact is that many Department of Transportation officers at weigh stations, dock employees and other positions relevant to the industry now conduct business in English and Spanish. Interestingly enough, the FMCSA now has a Spanish-language version of their website, www.fmcsa.dot.gov/espa.



Publisher Randall-Reilly has begun publication of Transportista, the Spanish language version of their popular industry magazine, Truckers News. Filled with ads by major trucking companies, insurance companies and other trucking-related businesses, the magazine, like the FMCSA's Spanish language site, shows the lackadaisical approach to FMCSA Regulation 391.11 within the industry. Companies that do not recruit drivers who speak and understand English further facilitate the problem. For example, on Sunday, Jan. 8, the Port of Miami was shut down for several hours because a trucker could not speak English well enough to inform a Port of Miami officer of the contents of his trailer. According to the FMCSA's own English website, that driver was not qualified to drive on America's highways.



Driving Schools



Adding further diesel fuel to the fire are renegade truck driving schools across the country that assist non-English speaking students in obtaining their commercial driver's licenses. The "payment for license" schemes use third party testing examiners to certify that the student is qualified to drive a truck. These third party examiners obtain a fee from the student and falsify the results of the tests, allowing unskilled, non-English speaking individuals the opportunity to drive an 80,000 pound vehicle on our highways and through our cities.



On October 1, 2006, Oklahoma state trooper William McClendon, was killed by one such driver. Hussein Osman, who attended a truck driving school in Missouri that provided CDLs to hundreds of unqualified drivers (many were Bosnian and Somali immigrants), was also killed. In March, 2004, Nasko Nozov, a Macedonian living in Chicago, killed a husband, wife and their two children in Tennessee while driving a truck with an illegally obtained CDL. He is serving ten years in Chicago for lying to a Federal grand jury in relation to the CDL fraud and received an additional four year sentence from a judge in Tennessee – a small price to pay for the lives of four innocent people.



Terrorism and Trucking



Mohammed Yousuf Mullawala, a 28-year-old Indian national, sits in the Suffolk County Detention Center in Boston. After coming to the United States on a student visa, Mullawala applied to several colleges, including Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island and City University in New York; he is reported never to have attended classes. Mullawala moved to various locations in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York City. Amassing several driver's licenses and addresses, he stayed under the radar of immigration officials until the fateful day he began attending classes at a Smithfield tractor-trailer school.



Mullawala's interest in obtaining software on hazardous materials and the lack of interest in learning to back up the truck alerted officials that something was amiss. They reported Mullawala to the Department of Homeland Security. He is currently being held on a civil immigration charge for violating his student visa and authorities are investigating possible links to potential terrorist attacks.



Nowhere To Turn



There seems to be no solution to the problem. The FMCSA refuses to enforce its own regulations. Other law enforcement and homeland security agencies are oblivious to the rules and regulations regarding the trucking industry. There will be hundreds more like Hussein Osman, willing to pay hundreds of dollars for an illegally obtained CDL. There are hundreds more like Mohammed Mullawalah, who are learning how to drive forward but not back up -- it's like not wanting to learn how to land an airplane.



The Port of Miami? That’s just the beginning of bad things with big trucks to come.