On Friday, the Austin Police Department and the attorney representing Eritrean national Solomun Weldekeal-Araya confirmed he tested negative for drugs and alcohol following the deadly I-35 crash. The semi-truck accident in North Austin left five people dead and eleven injured, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The crash occurred when Weldekeal-Araya’s truck collided with multiple vehicles on the busy interstate.
A bystander recorded Weldekeal Araya trying to understand English in mid-March after the bystander scolded the driver for killing people in the crash.
The story continues after the Biden Administration 2023 implemented an initiative to boost the presence of the “refugee community” in trucking. The Biden Department of Transportation, from January 2021 until April 2022, issued 876,000 commercial driver’s licenses. This effectively doubled the number of new drivers each year. American Truckers United is a trucker advocacy organization based in Arkansas that attributes the increase in semi-truck crashes to unassimilated immigrants.
On their website, the group highlights the dramatic increase in large truck accidents beginning in 2016. This was the year that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration under former President Barack Obama issued the memo “MCECE-2016-016”, removing “the requirement to place drivers out-of-service for English Language Proficiency.”