US Homeland Security under fire over ‘anti-Indian’ social media post
A social media post by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claiming that “Mr Singh does not know how to drive” has drawn widespread criticism, with politicians and Indian diaspora groups accusing the department of racism and anti-Indian profiling.
The post, published on X on Wednesday, featured an artificial intelligence-generated poster showing the Transformers character Optimus Prime facing a brown-skinned man. The image carried the message “Self-deport or find out” and said: “America for Americans. Get off our roads, you don't know how to drive Mr Singh.”
The appearance of the man in the poster was similar to that of an Indian-origin truck driver who was arrested in Florida in August 2025 after a crash that killed three people.
The DHS post had been viewed more than 4.2 million times by noon on Thursday, Indian time, and had received more than 1,000 reposts. It was posted in response to a video shared by the department urging people to report allegedly undocumented migrants living in the US.
The North American Punjabi Truckers Association estimates that between 1,30,000 and 1,50,000 drivers from Punjab and Haryana work in the US trucking sector.
The post drew criticism from politicians in both India and the US, as well as Indian diaspora organisations.
Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra said the US department was telling Indian Punjabis that they did not know how to drive and described the post as a “racist advertisement”.
Moitra urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “bring this up” with US President Donald Trump, referring to the Union government’s decision to not invoke the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against US citizen Matt Van Dyke in a recent case.
The TMC leader was referring to the National Investigation Agency’s chargesheet filed on Tuesday against seven foreigners, including a US citizen, who were arrested in March. The agency charged them with immigration violations but did not invoke the UAPA, under which they had initially been held. The individuals were arrested over alleged links to ethnic armed groups in Myanmar hostile to India.
Ranjeev Puri, leader of the Democrats in the Michigan House of Representatives, also criticised the DHS post, identifying himself as a proud Sikh-American and noting that Singh is his middle name.
“Singh is not a punchline,” Puri said, stressing that it is a surname “carried proudly by millions of Sikhs worldwide”, generations of whom have served the US, built businesses and contributed to the country’s democratic fabric.
“When an official government agency mocks people for their name, their faith, or how they look, that is not strength,” he said, describing the post as “xenophobia dressed up as public policy”.
Puri said such rhetoric divided Americans and distracted from the real challenges facing the country that Washington needed to address.
The Hindu American Foundation, a non-profit organisation that advocates for Hindus in the US, also criticised the post, saying that Singhs are Hindu, Sikh and American, “and they drive”.
The organisation described the DHS post as “racist, un-American, anti-Indian profiling/trolling” and said it “should shock our nation’s collective conscience”.
It called for an investigation, arguing that the post was discriminatory messaging by a federal agency and went far beyond political communication.
Another advocacy organisation, the Coalition of Hindus of North America, said that while immigration and other laws must be enforced, entire communities should not be caricatured.
The organisation pointed out that dangerous drivers come from all backgrounds, ethnicities, faiths and surnames.
“Singling out some last names does nothing for safe streets, but it does endanger the safety of hundreds of thousands of Americans with names like Singh and Kumar,” it said.
The group also warned that when an official US government account portrays a brown person as “foreign” and “un-American”, it could encourage targeting of Hindus and Indian Americans, including legal residents and US citizens.
It called for an end to the stigmatisation of millions of law-abiding Hindu, Sikh and Indian Americans.
Several other social media users also criticised the DHS post, saying it had crossed a line. One user called for people to “stand up for Sikhs” against what they described as the blatant misuse of the Singh surname as a target for attack.
Indian-origin truck drivers face scrutiny
The controversy comes amid several incidents in recent months involving truck drivers of Indian origin in the US who were arrested or charged in connection with fatal crashes involving commercial vehicles.
The arrests have taken place against the backdrop of a broader immigration crackdown under Trump’s second term, which began in January 2025.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been implementing the Trump administration’s large-scale deportation programme, one of the major campaign promises made by Trump ahead of the presidential election.
More than 3,500 Indian citizens were deported from the US in 2025, while more than 1,100 had been deported in 2026 as of June, according to information provided by the Union government to Parliament.