Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, is looking to do something about deadly truck crashes involving foreigners.
This week, Moreno sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, demanding answers regarding Modou Ngom, an illegal immigrant alleged to be responsible for a deadly incident earlier this month in Ohio.
“I write today to bring your attention to an inexcusable failure of our immigration and commercial licensing systems, which led to the tragic death of an Ohio family,” Moreno said in his letter to the secretaries.
He wrote in the letter that the “case is not an isolated administrative failure—it is a systemic breakdown with fatal consequences.”
Ngom allegedly triggered a chain-reaction crash that killed three people, including a 1-year-old child on 1-71 in Delaware County. Others were seriously injured, and lawsuits against Ngom are being filed.
According to Moreno, Ngom is “an illegal immigrant who entered the country unlawfully, falsified his identity, lied to immigration officials to achieve naturalization, fraudulently obtained a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), and established a trucking company on false pretenses.”
“Simply put, he is a criminal and should never have been in the U.S. in the first place,” the letter states.
Citing the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the senator pointed to a timeline going back to the 1990s, when Ngom first came to the country. Ngom’s Ohio’s driver’s license, obtained under a different name, was said to have been obtained in 2003. He obtained the CDL in 2007.
Ngom became a naturalized citizen in the 2010s, using the name of Lamine Gaye, though he later went back to using Ngom.
The letter also points to other safety violations.
“When the federal government turns a blind eye and fails to police its own borders, it is innocent American families on Ohio roads who pay the ultimate price. It is no surprise to me that this man was not apprehended under the Biden Administration. Nonetheless, lessons must be learned from this preventable tragedy,” Moreno wrote in his letter, pointing to the previous administration’s relaxed immigration enforcement.
His letter also applauded President Donald Trump’s handling of the immigration issue. Moreno said President Donald Trump has “taken historic steps to remove illegal aliens from our nation,” and that “when that responsibility is neglected, the consequences are measured in American lives.”
Ngom was indicted on counts of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault, though the senator called for more to be done. Crashes by foreign drivers have also impacted other states.
“The Department of Justice should bring all appropriate federal charges against Ngom, including, potentially, immigration fraud, false statements, and identity-document crimes. I also encourage the Department of State—if it is determined that Ngom procured U.S. citizenship through fraud or willful misrepresentation—to initiate denaturalization consistent with federal law,” Moreno wrote.
The DOT put out a news release in February regarding a rule finalized by Duffy to “stop unqualified foreign drivers from obtaining licenses to drive commercial trucks and buses.”
