Sikh community alarmed by Trump administration post targeting truck drivers
A screenshot of a since-deleted post by the federal Department of Homeland Security. Credit: Screenshot
Members of Long Island's Sikh community on Friday expressed alarm and anger over a since-deleted social media post by the Trump administration featuring a federal official telling a brown-skinned, bearded man with a head covering, "Get off our roads, you don't know how to drive Mr. Singh."
The Department of Homeland Security post featured an AI-generated movie poster depicting Transformers character Optimus Prime wearing a DHS logo on his chest and facing off in New York City with the man. Accompanying the image were the messages: "America for Americans" and "Self deport or find out."
Mohinder Singh Taneja, president of the Sikh Council of Long Island, said he’s known many Sikh truck drivers, both during his time living in New Delhi, and since moving to Long Island 35 years ago. Like most members of the Sikh and Indian communities, he found them to be “very hardworking, very law abiding, very honest.”
“That kind of post was not appropriate. It is not appropriate of a government agency of that caliber,” Taneja, 70, of Salisbury said.
A spokesperson for DHS, which removed the post Thursday, in a statement emailed to Newsday, called accusations that the post was offensive “nonsensical drivel.” The unnamed spokesperson suggested that the image depicted Harjinder Singh, “an illegal alien from India” who in August 2025 made an illegal U-turn in a truck, causing a crash that killed three people in Florida.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has targeted immigrant truck drivers, including by last year forcing New York’s Department of Motor Vehicles to indefinitely suspend a program for licensed immigrants with temporary residency status.
The DHS spokesperson said Singh, who was issued a commercial driver’s license in California, “should never have been in our country.”
The post drew criticism from Democratic elected officials, including Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), whose district includes one of Long Island's largest Sikh communities. In a statement Thursday, Suozzi called the DHS message "not only divisive, but very dangerous."
Originating in Northern India, Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world, with more than 25 million members, and over 500,000 in the United States, according to We Are Sikhs, a Maryland-based organization. Sikh leaders have said about 15,000 Long Islanders follow the religion, which believes in the equality of all humans.
As “Singh” is a common name among Sikhs, who are known for wearing beards and turbans, the DHS social media post was seen as particularly insensitive by various Sikh organizations, including Roslyn Heights-based Sikh Youth of New York, which has called for a “serious review” of how the post was created, reviewed and approved.
“Pairing ‘Mr. Singh’ with the depiction of a visibly Sikh man in a message concerning unlawful conduct created an association that many Sikh Americans understandably found deeply troubling,” the organization wrote to Newsday in a statement. “Federal government communications should never demean or stereotype an American community based on its name, appearance, or faith.”
The DHS message came on the same week as the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, after which many Sikhs were the target of hostility because of the wrongful assumption that they were Muslim. It also coincided with DHS launching a phone line for anonymously reporting commercial license fraud.
It all combines to make Sikh truck drivers feel more unsafe than they already did, said Sahib Sohal, immigrant justice fellow for the New York-based Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group.
“One of the things that they do tell me is how unwelcome they feel, sometimes, when they're just doing their job. At truck stops … they get dirty looks. Sometimes they are called slurs,” Sohal, of Glen Head, said.
Toy manufacturer Hasbro, which owns the Transformers brand, sought to distance itself from the post, telling Newsday in a statement that it was done without permission and does not “represent the Transformers brand or Hasbro.”
Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.
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