The state of Indiana has a sordid legacy of racial profiling.
As one of the most significant hubs of Ku Klux Klan activity in the early 20th century, the state’s history is rife with examples of bigoted fearmongers who have warned the white masses to stand guard against marginalized groups — be that Black people, Jews or immigrants.
That history was made new again in 2024, when some Indiana residents were disturbed by pro-KKK signs in their communities touting Donald Trump’s plans to deport immigrants.
And this history was front of mind for me as I learned of a new “tip line” launched by Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., for truckers and others in the industry to report on drivers they allege are in the country illegally, or unauthorized to drive a truck, or don’t speak English well enough to meet requirements.
The context here is that the Trump administration, along with its allies in Congress and conservative media, has been cherry-picking recent traffic crashes to portray immigrant drivers as threats to public safety. Even Trump loyalist Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, decried the racist scapegoating coming out of MAGA world after some of these incidents.
Nonetheless, Banks is calling on truckers to snitch on other drivers via his “TruckSafe Tipline” — and his anti-immigrant sentiment is hardly subtle.
“Indiana is the Crossroads of America and Hoosiers are getting killed because drivers who shouldn’t be here in the first place are behind the wheel,” he said in a news release.
The announcement comes just months after a federal court placed a hold on the Trump administration’s efforts to institute severe new restrictions on immigrants looking to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. And from my vantage point, this tip line is primed to fuel racial profiling similar to the kind we’ve seen before in Indiana.
Banks said tips will be “reviewed and shared with the U.S. Department of Transportation and its Office of Inspector General.” But unless we are to believe everyone in the trucking industry moonlights as an immigration lawyer or a linguist who can determine one’s English-speaking proficiency with precision, it seems extremely likely that some drivers may find themselves ensnared for no reason other than their accent or ethnicity — a prospect that, again, wouldn’t be new in Indiana but would be appalling nonetheless.
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