Twenty-Five Years After 9/11, We’re Still Fighting the Same Dangerous Stereotypes
Blog
Sep. 10, 2026
By Sim J. Singh Attariwala, Director of Anti-Hate Program at Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC, and Mannirmal Kaur, Senior Federal Policy Manager at the Sikh Coalition.
A recent DHS social media post revives dangerous stereotypes that have long fueled discrimination, profiling, and violence against Sikh Americans and other communities.
As Sikh Americans mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and reflect on the painful legacy of the backlash that followed, a recent Department of Homeland Security social media post raises serious concerns about the resurgence of narratives that have long fueled discrimination, profiling, and violence against Sikh, Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Middle Eastern communities. Even though part of the post was taken down, the agency doubled down in a later post by blaming California Governor Newsom for the accident.
We Know Where Scapegoating Leads
For many Sikh Americans, the legacy of 9/11 is not only about national tragedy. It is also about the wave of harassment, violence, bullying, discrimination, and profiling that followed.
Sikh, Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Middle Eastern communities were targeted not only by individuals acting on prejudice, but also by government policies and law enforcement practices driven by suspicion rather than evidence. This occurred despite members of these communities participating in recovery efforts at Ground Zero, and contributing to communities across the country across sectors, as they had for generations.
Among the tragic examples was the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh American gas station owner in Arizona who was planting American flags and flowers outside his business when he was killed in what became one of the first fatal retaliatory hate crimes following September 11, 2001. His murder remains a stark reminder of how dangerous rhetoric, misinformation, and collective blame can produce deadly consequences.
The timing of DHS’ post is also painful given that the Sikh American community has just emerged from remembering the horrific mass shooting by a white supremacist at their place of worship, a gurdwara, that took place on August 5, 2012. The attack remains one of the deadliest acts of anti-Sikh violence in American history, killing seven, and it demonstrated how hatred and dehumanization can translate into devastating real-world consequences.
Against this backdrop, government communications must be especially careful not to amplify stereotypes, inflame tensions, or encourage suspicion toward entire communities.
The concerns surrounding the DHS post extend beyond its broader messaging. The image used in the post depicted an identifiable Sikh American truck driver who had already been arrested and charged in connection with a traffic accident. The use of a real person’s image in a politically charged message raises profound concerns about fairness, due process, and the potential for public intimidation.
Profiling Truckers Won’t Make America Safer
Equally troubling is the implication that foreign-born truck drivers, immigrant truck drivers, or Sikh truck drivers present a unique public safety or national security threat. Such claims are unsupported by available evidence and distract from meaningful conversations about road safety and transportation policy. DHS’ request to report illegal aliens to a hotline amounts to a campaign to invite the public to harass truckers via a law enforcement agency solely on the basis of a driver’s perceived identity. Sikh, Asian, Latino, Muslim, Arab, and other communities that have long been targeted by bias may face the greatest impact.
If policymakers are genuinely concerned about reducing traffic fatalities and improving road safety, they should focus on evidence-based solutions that address the most significant causes of roadway injuries and deaths. The administration itself has admitted that it has “insufficient evidence” to demonstrate that immigrant truck drivers are more prone to unsafe driving. In its Final Rule barring broad swaths of lawfully present immigrants from holding commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs), the Department of Transportation cited 17 fatal crashes in 2025 involving “non-domiciled” CDL holders — that is, CDL holders who are not U.S. citizens or green card holders. These crashes represent less than half of one percent of the 4,047 fatal crashes involving large trucks and buses last year. In contrast, non-domiciled CDL holders make up five percent of all active CDL holders.
According to its own data, then, the administration cannot show that non-domiciled CDL holders are involved in crashes at a rate that exceeds, or even that is equal to, their share of the sector. Further undermining the argument that immigrant drivers are less safe is data recently shared by the California Department of Motor Vehicles indicating that temporary legal resident CDL holders are actually involved in fewer crashes than U.S. citizen CDL holders.
Demonizing immigrants or portraying entire communities as threats may generate political attention, but it does nothing to make America’s roads safer or keep the economy moving in a time of great economic instability. When government officials promote fear instead of facts, they divert attention away from policies that could actually improve the lives of all while placing marginalized communities at greater risk.
We’ve Seen These Narratives Before
Many Sikhs will recall the inflammatory public discourse surrounding Sikh truck drivers in 2025, including social media commentary from senior government officials and other prominent nationalist public figures that amplified negative stereotypes and cast suspicion on an entire community. Rather than focusing on individual facts and accountability, these narratives encouraged broad assumptions about Sikh and immigrant truckers as a group.
Research and lived experience both show that hateful rhetoric can contribute to real-world harm. When public officials portray entire communities as dangerous or suspect, incidents of harassment, discrimination, and violence often increase.
These concerns are especially acute at a time when law enforcement agencies have warned about white supremacist recruitment and the spread of anti-immigrant narratives. A recent state law enforcement agency bulletin has also raised concern over the DHS social media posts promoting recruitment with white supremacist-aligned language and imagery. The bulletin notes that such messaging heightens the risks to communities by emboldening extremist hate actors, potentially leading to bias-motivated violence or efforts to infiltrate law enforcement agencies. Communities that have already experienced the consequences of hate-fueled violence understand these dangers all too well.
Recently published FBI hate crime statistical data show a concentration of anti-Sikh incidents in September 2025, following the highly publicized Florida truck crash and the wave of political rhetoric targeting Sikh truck drivers. This also comes amid findings that anti-Sikh hate crimes continue to rise almost every year.
Words and Actions Matter
The lesson of the past twenty-five years is clear: collective blame is dangerous.
Government officials should reject efforts to scapegoat immigrants, religious minorities, and working Americans. They should recognize the contributions immigrants, Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, South Asians, and Middle Eastern communities make to this country, including the large swath of truck drivers who help keep the American economy moving every day.
The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division’s Associate Attorney General, Harmeet Dhillon, a Sikh American, must also do more than ignore the fact that hate crimes continue to target immigrant, Sikh, Muslim, South Asian, Hindu, Arab, Middle Eastern, and other communities. This includes individuals who exploit immigrant communities and impersonate immigration enforcement agents. She has instead facilitated departmental staffing for immigration enforcement efforts; worked to stop diversity, equity, and inclusion; and stopped regularly meeting with Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, and Hindu community leaders. During Dhillon’s tenure, the division has published a mere three press releases about hate crime cases under the second Trump administration.
Congress must investigate DHS’s promotion of initiatives that encourage profiling and examine whether the Department of Justice has effectively responded to discrimination, harassment, and hate targeting immigrant communities. Federal agencies should be held accountable when they normalize bias and suspicion instead of protecting civil rights and public safety. At a moment when Sikh Americans are reflecting on the lasting impact of post-9/11 backlash, government agencies should be helping prevent another cycle of profiling and hate, not helping fuel it.
