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The father of a California girl who sustained a traumatic brain injury when an illegal immigrant commercial truck driver slammed into a vehicle she was riding in urged congressional lawmakers to prioritize the safety of American citizens amid the back-and-forth rhetoric over the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign.
Marcus Coleman was in attendance during this week's House Judiciary Committee hearing in which then-Homeland Security Kristi Noem answered questions about the agency's immigration enforcement actions.
"At this point right now, what they're doing is extremely disrespectful. It's insensitive," Coleman told Fox News Digital, referring to elected officials who oppose illegal immigrant enforcement. "Until it happens to them, that's the point of view they're going to have."
On Wednesday, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., a vocal critic of the Trump administration, apologized to the families in attendance who have lost loved ones to the actions of illegal immigrants, before remarking on migrant crime statistics during his interaction with Noem.
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"For the folks that are here and your families, I'm sorry," Cohen said, holding his hand over his heart. "It's terrible what happened to you, to your children or your family members, but they are more likely… citizens are more likely to be attacked by United States citizens who are not undocumented."
Noem, who has since been reassigned as the Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, shot back, calling Cohen's remark offensive to the Angel Families, which refers to relatives of Americans killed by individuals in the United States unlawfully.
"The vast majority of the people sitting behind me have lost their children due to drugs, overdoses from drugs that came over the southern border," she said. "They died from their kids being hit in accidents on the roads where illegal drivers were driving a truck. Marcus Coleman, Delilah's father, has told the story over and over again."
In 2024, Dalilah Coleman was critically injured in Southern California when the driver of an 18-wheel tractor-trailer moving at 60 mph slammed into a vehicle she was traveling in. She sustained a fractured skull, broken femur and a traumatic brain injury.
Partap Singh, an illegal immigrant from India, was identified as the driver who obtained a commercial driver's license in California, authorities said. Singh was driving at an unsafe speed and failed to stop for traffic in a construction zone just before the crash.
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"They go back home, like my daughter's driver," Coleman added. "He went back to India and he's living life free. And my daughter said, you're dealing with this. Had that been a U.S. citizen, he'd have been in jail right now."
President Donald Trump honored Dalilah during his State of the Union address, drawing applause in the chamber as she attended with her father.
"Dalilah Coleman was only five years old in June 2024 when an eighteen-wheeler tractor-trailer plowed into her stopped car at sixty miles an hour or more," Trump said. "The driver was an illegal alien let in by Joe Biden and given a commercial driver's license by open borders politicians in California."
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Trump and Noem have come under criticism from Democrats who view actions taken to arrest illegal migrants as harmful. Meanwhile, Republicans have cited multiple instances in which American citizens have been killed, injured and harmed by people living in the U.S. illegally.
"They shouldn't be here to begin with," Coleman said. "So for every one of those families that's out there, just the fact that it was an illegal person who did it, it shouldn't have happened."
During Wednesday's hearing, Cohen alluded to a 2024 Justice Department study using data from Texas that shows that illegal immigrants are less than half as likely as native-born Americans to be arrested for homicide.
The same pattern holds for assault, sexual assault, robbery, burglary, theft and arson," Cohen added. "And they're half as likely to be arrested for drug offenses," he said.
"The facts show that most of the people that you have stopped and tried to deport have not committed any of those crimes," he said. "In fact, they've committed no crimes at all."
Coleman said he disagreed with nearly everything Cohen said during the hearing.
"It's very concerning, it's very disruptive for me," he said. "I disagree wholeheartedly with pretty much everything he said. "People that sit there and believe in open borders are the very people that make sure that their doors are double locked and make sure that their gun rights are on par."
Like many who support the Trump administration's deportation efforts, he said the migrant crime statistics mean very little to victims' families.
"To that family, it's huge, but to the person it doesn't happen to, it's a small number," he said.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Cohen's office.
