Marcus Coleman, whose 7-year-old daughter Dalilah was left with a fractured skull, broken femur and traumatic brain injury after a 2024 crash in Southern California, told members of Congress on Tuesday that he did not want their condolences.
“I reject your guys’ sympathy,” Coleman said during a hearing held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, which examined sanctuary policies in California, Colorado and Maryland.
Coleman said Democratic lawmakers had never contacted him after the crash. “Not one of you guys have ever sat there and seen me in the hallways and said, ‘Hey, sorry about your daughter.’ You guys do it right here where you guys are grandstanding on top of your soapbox,” he told the panel. “This is when you guys care. Right here inside this room is the only time you guys care.”
Dalilah was critically injured when an 18-wheel tractor-trailer traveling at 60 mph struck the vehicle she was riding in. Authorities identified the driver as Partap Singh, an immigrant in the country illegally from India who had obtained a California commercial driver’s license. Investigators said Singh was driving at an unsafe speed and failed to stop for traffic in a construction zone.
“She didn’t ask for any of this,” Coleman said of his daughter. “The people that jumped the fence did though. They knew exactly what they were doing. They still chose to move forward in that direction. And every day something’s happening to somebody, and it is your guys’ fault. I hold each and every one of you responsible for it, and I always will.”
Coleman told lawmakers he has since left his job as a truck driver and is raising nine children on a tighter budget. “I’m no longer truck driving. I no longer make the money that we used to make. I’m now pinching pennies,” he said.
He also noted that his wife immigrated to the United States legally. “My wife, an immigrant. She did what she’s supposed to do,” he said. “She did exactly what she’s supposed to do to get here.”
Turning to lawmakers who back sanctuary policies, Coleman said, “I think that building needs to get checked for mold or something, because you guys are really out of your guys’ mind thinking that sanctuary cities are the way to go. This is the end result of Sanctuary City right here,” he said, referring to his daughter.
A second family’s account
Patricia Fox also testified, describing the lasting effects of a March 2025 hit-and-run crash in Colorado that left her adult daughter, Carissa “Luu” Aspnes, permanently disabled. Fox said the driver, an immigrant from Venezuela in the country illegally, and a passenger fled after Aspnes was thrown headfirst into a concrete barrier at nearly 50 mph, without checking whether she was alive.
“Despite her initial prognosis, Carissa survived. Praise God, but survival and recovery are not the same,” Fox told the subcommittee.
Fox said she now uses a Hoyer lift to move her daughter, who cannot sit up or stand on her own, and that she blends her daughter’s food, feeds her through a G-tube, administers medications, bathes her and sleeps lightly at night listening for her daughter’s pulse oximeter alarm.
“One collision created an entire family of victims,” Fox said. She added that her daughter’s immigration-related circumstances compounded her family’s grief. “If an American citizen had hit my daughter, I wouldn’t be here asking, ‘Why was somebody who had no lawful right to be in this country here to hit her in the first place?'”
Fox told lawmakers the issue should not divide along party lines. “The lives of American citizens should matter to both sides,” she said. “We get it. You guys hate Trump. The campaign ads, they’re all the same. Taking the fight to Trump, standing against Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. You need to love Americans more than you hate Trump. That’s not partisan politics. It’s literally your job.”
The hearing came as Republicans on the subcommittee argued that sanctuary policies in California, Colorado and Maryland limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities in ways that put Americans at risk.
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