Illegal Alien Convicted for Deadly Semi-Truck Crash to Be Deported

An illegal alien truck driver convicted of “careless driving resulting in death” for his responsibility in a fatal crash in Colorado last summer was detained by ICE Sunday immediately upon his release from jail.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized Mexican national Ignacio Cruz-Mendoza moments after his release from a Colorado county jail following a roughly one-year prison sentence, KMGH-TV reported.

“If we weren’t here, this person would have been released back to the community of Denver,” Robert Guadian, Denver ICE field director, said.

This is not the first time that Cruz-Mendoza has been set for deportation. ICE said it had removed the illegal alien from the country twelve times since 2002. It added that the Mexican national had even self-deported four times within the same time period.

Guadian said that ICE should not have had to allocate a handful of agents to take Cruz-Mendoza into custody on Sunday. He explained that the booking could have been more seamlessly arranged had local law enforcement policies not prohibited federal agents from transporting inmates to ICE custody inside detention facilities.

“We’d rather be in the jail. Making a safe and secure transfer of custody takes people off the line, takes agents and officers off the line that … could be doing other things, enforcement activities. Instead, we have to wait in parking lots,” the ICE chief said.

Cruz-Mendoza served time for his role in a deadly traffic incident in June 2024 near Conifer, Colorado, in which a semi-truck driven by the illegal alien “veered out of control and dumped a load of steel and iron rods across Highway 285,” the New York Post reported at the time. The metal load landed on the pickup truck of Scott Miller, 64, tragically crushing and killing him. The errant load likewise crushed four other vehicles and caused another driver to suffer major wounds.

The Jefferson County District Attorney charged Cruz-Mendoza, 47, with “minor traffic misdemeanors — careless driving resulting in a death, and careless driving resulting in injury,” according to the Post. Speaking with the newspaper at the time, Miller’s widow expressed her outrage at the “uncharacteristically low [charges] for such a deadly incident.”

Foreign truck drivers have flooded U.S. highways in recent years. Companies have sought to hire them as a cheap labor replacement for U.S. drivers because illegal aliens accept far lower wages than their American counterparts.

Last month, Shannon Everett, a cofounder of American Truckers United, blasted the trucking industry as fatalities on U.S. roads mount, many at the hands of truck drivers who are not citizens.

“We’re trying to make a statement so that the feds will do something. The foreign truck drivers — including many illegals — are killing American drivers, slashing truckers’ income, and pushing companies out of business,” Everett said after an accident involving an illegal driver killed five people in Texas.

Other truckers agree.

“For us, the biggest problem is …. illegal immigrants coming in and getting the license without anything,” said Rhaman Dhillon, the founder of the California-based North American Punjabi Truckers Association. “No training, no language [test], no nothing. They still get it,” he told Breitbart News.

American truck drivers are working hard to lobby state and federal agencies to strengthen regulations and testing requirements to head off the danger on U.S. roads.

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