← Videos · Border & Immigration

Secretary Noem in Indiana: 223 Arrests under Operation Midway Blitz and the CDL Crackdown

October 30, 2025 · U.S. Department of Homeland Security · 0:36:55

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference in Gary, Indiana, with Governor Mike Braun and ICE leadership on Operation Midway Blitz and the danger posed by illegal-alien commercial drivers. Noem said, as she stated it, that many people who come into the country illegally go to a state, get licensed, and receive a commercial driver’s license, that many do not speak English or read road signs, and that putting them behind the wheel of tractor-trailers weighing tens of thousands of pounds endangers every citizen on the roads.

Through the Department’s 287(g) partnership with Indiana, she said, a recent operation arrested 223 illegal aliens and took them off the roads; of those, 146 were drivers, including 46 semi-truck drivers and another 82 operating box trucks, buses, moving vans, and similar vehicles, with CDLs issued by more than a dozen states — overwhelmingly, as she stated it, sanctuary states such as California, Illinois, and New York. She thanked Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for his work and new policies, and warned that anyone driving illegally on American streets and highways is endangering citizens and has their days numbered, as she stated it.

Noem cited fatal cases, including, as she stated them, an illegal alien from Serbia and Montenegro operating a semi without a valid commercial license who swerved into oncoming traffic in Indiana earlier that month and killed Jeffrey Lee Eberly; an August incident in Florida in which three people were killed; and a California crash the prior week in which an intoxicated illegal-alien truck driver killed three Americans. She also presented placards of arrested individuals she described as among the worst of the worst under Operation Midway Blitz, beginning with a man from Mexico convicted of felony cruelty toward a child and possession of a fraudulent driver’s license, as she stated it.

Why it matters

The press conference fuses the administration’s immigration enforcement with highway safety, using the Indiana 287(g) operation and fatal-crash cases to argue for a national crackdown on commercially licensed illegal drivers.

Scoreboard watch

Flagged for the scoreboard editor: Noem stated the Indiana operation arrested 223 illegal aliens, 146 of them drivers including 46 semi-truck drivers, as she stated the figures at the press conference; no verdict is given here.

Sources: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Secretary Noem to Hold Press Conference with Gov. Braun and ICE leadership”, Gary, Indiana, 2025-10-30 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-10-30). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.