Days ago, I was honored to interview Marcus Coleman, the father of Dalilah Coleman, who was severely injured after an illegal immigrant driving a semi-truck crashed into the vehicle she was in.
This interview will be featured in my upcoming documentary, “The Illegal Highways,” where we discuss not only how illegal immigrants are able to get behind the wheel of a semi-truck, but also the Americans who have suffered because of it.
Marcus describes in great detail the evening he received a call that his five-year-old daughter had been in an accident. At first, he was unsure of the seriousness of the situation.
It wasn’t until he received another call from EMS stating that his daughter was being airlifted to the hospital that he realized her condition was far worse than anyone could have imagined.
He openly explains the confusion that persisted until he finally laid eyes on his daughter. Hospital workers couldn’t find her at first because she had been admitted under an alternate name, and he grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of help locating his child.
I could never imagine what he experienced as a father — walking into a hospital and seeing his frail daughter connected to machines, watching her condition initially get worse.
In the video attached, I clipped out six minutes of him describing his experience of watching his daughter barely survive this ordeal, including multiple health scares that many thought she would not overcome.
Thankfully, she is alive, but she is not the same little girl as before. Today, she is seven years old, non-verbal, and can only walk with assistance.
I met Marcus in D.C. because he has been working with the federal government to help draft legislation that would curb illegal immigrants from obtaining CDLs and strengthen enforcement — all with the objective of preventing another tragedy like Dalilah’s.
The full interview was over an hour long. Of course, with a documentary, you only see a small percentage of it. However, I wanted to write this to express to the world what I took away from this experience.
It is not often that you find people who are willing to sacrifice for a greater cause. Marcus isn’t trying to chase fame or run for office; he’s just trying to do the right thing.
When I asked him what it was like being at the State of the Union and having the President acknowledge their situation, he explained that he sees these moments as part of the process and not as moments of excitement.
This response I can completely understand. He would rather have a happy and healthy daughter than anything else in the world. His family was forced into this position by systemic failures, which the documentary will explain.
As Marcus put it in the interview, he’s doing the job that politicians should be doing. The man is sacrificing his time flying back and forth between California and Washington D.C. to follow through fighting for a greater purpose.
I found him to be a very honorable and genuine man who is striving to create a safer world for Americans. Most importantly, he is a man of strong Christian faith who openly acknowledges that it is his faith that has kept him together throughout this entire ordeal.
One of the most powerful stories he told me was about meeting the man who almost killed his daughter. He had so much anger and hatred toward him — until he looked into his eyes. He saw a young man, a soul, and decided at that moment to forgive and let go of that rage.
He chose to forgive him, but not to forget. Not forgetting has allowed him to fight for a greater cause.
This documentary isn’t about dehumanizing anyone, including the illegal immigrants behind the wheel. I understand — more than the average person — how many of these men are brought to America under false pretenses and are essentially indentured servants who have to drive a truck twice as long as the average American trucker.
The purpose of making this film is to tell the stories of the people caught up in this systemic failure. We often lose sight of the families who wake up every day knowing they will never talk to their spouse, sibling, or child ever again. I want their stories heard around the world so that we, the American public, also don’t forget that there are real innocent lives at stake.
I am still crowdfunding for this project. If you’d like to support it, you can donate on GiveSendGo: https://www.givesendgo.com/theillegalhighways
