INDIANAPOLIS — Dalilah’s Law, a commercial driver’s license-related bill spoken about at length by President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, was recently introduced by U.S. Senator Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana.
The bill, introduced on Wednesday by Banks, prohibits states from issuing commercial driver’s licenses to individuals who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States or holders of certain work visas.
Named after Dalilah Coleman, a first-grade student who was injured in a crash involving a semitruck driven by Partap Sigh, an Indian man who was driving a semi-truck in California, Trump spoke about the introduction of the bill during Tuesday evening’s speech.
“Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger or location,” Trump said, according to a transcript of the State of the Union from the American Presidency Project. “That’s why tonight, I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Dalilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.”
According to a news release from Banks’ office, the law, if passed in its current form, would require states to take the following actions as a condition of funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation:
- Limiting trucking licenses to United States citizens, lawful permanent residents and certain work visa holders only
- Revoking all trucking licenses currently issued to individuals who do not reside in the country in violation of civil or criminal law, as well as those individuals with temporary status, whether or not if they have work authorization
- Offering CDL knowledge and skill tests in English only
This comes after multiple incidents in the state of Indiana where individuals were killed in crashes driven by CDL drivers who entered the country in violation of civil or criminal law, including the November 2025 crash in Boone County that killed Indiana National Guardsman Terry Frye.
According to previous reports, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office identified the driver as a man from the country of Georgia. The man was charged with two infractions on Tuesday in Boone County after November’s crash, including:
- One count of following too closely – involves bodily injury
- One count of unsafe lane movement – but involves bodily injury.
“Too many people have been hurt. Too many have been killed. Americans are paying the price because illegal drivers are being handed commercial driver’s licenses like candy and put behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks,” Banks said in the release. “That stops now. The Dalilah Law makes it clear: if you are here illegally, you do not get a CDL. We need to act and we need to act now.”