Mom Tells Illegal Alien Charged in Her Son's Death: 'I'm Praying for You.' Oregon Ignored ICE and Freed Him

Elizabeth Carter's son and his bride had been married 16 days when a jackknifed semi blocked a pitch-black Oregon highway and they drove into it. This month she got to face the man charged with killing them, Rajinder Kumar, an illegal alien from India. She didn't curse him. She told him she was praying for him.

The moment came as ICE agents handed Kumar back to Deschutes County to stand trial. ICE released the video on Oct. 26. Carter stands at the window of an agency vehicle, shielding her eyes from the sun. Kumar sits in the back seat. He mostly looks away and says nothing.

"Hello, Mr. Kumar. My name is Elizabeth Carter, I'm ... I'm William Micah Carter's mother," she says, according to ICE's own captions. "And I wanted you to know that I'm praying for you and your family. I know you didn't get up that morning planning to kill two newlyweds. And I know your family is going through something important too."

That is grace most people couldn't find. It also points straight at the question her grief raises: why was this man in the country, behind the wheel of a big rig, and why did an Oregon jail let him walk out after the crash?

The crash

It happened at 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 24, 2025, on Highway 20, about nine miles east of the tiny town of Brothers in central Oregon. According to the Oregon State Police, Kumar's Freightliner and trailer were "stopped in a jacknifed position, blocking both lanes of travel." A westbound Subaru Outback driven by William Micah Carter, 25, of Springfield, hit the trailer "at highway speeds." Carter and his passenger, Jennifer Lynn Lower, 24, of John Day, died at the scene. Kumar walked away unhurt.

Troopers named two causes: "Dark conditions and a lack of active emergency warning equipment." That matters, because federal trucking rules are blunt about what a driver owes everyone behind him. When a big rig stops on a highway, the driver "shall immediately activate the vehicular hazard warning signal flashers" and, "in any event within 10 minutes," set out reflective warning devices, federal rule 49 C.F.R. 392.22 says. A trailer across both lanes of an unlit road with no warning is like a wall nobody can see.

Kumar was arrested at the scene. A grand jury later indicted him on two counts of first-degree manslaughter and three counts of recklessly endangering another person. He has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent.

How he got here

ICE says the Border Patrol caught Kumar near Lukeville, Arizona, on Nov. 28, 2022, "after he illegally entered the United States from Mexico." He was put into removal proceedings and released into the country. "A pending application does not confer legal status in the United States," the agency said in its Oct. 15 release.

He then got a work permit and, ICE said in an Oct. 22 post, "a non-domiciled commercial driver's license in California." The federal crash record for the wreck lists his license state as California and the carrier as Dutta Transport Inc. of Fresno.

The license

"Non-domiciled" means a license for someone who isn't a permanent resident. California handed out a lot of them. A federal audit found that more than one in four of the California non-domiciled licenses it sampled broke federal rules, and in November 2025 the state admitted it had wrongly issued about 17,000 of them, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said. When California missed the deadline to cancel them, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pulled about $160 million in federal money. "Gavin Newsom has failed to do so – putting the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of the American people," he said.

Washington has since closed the door. A federal rule that took effect March 16, 2026, limits non-domiciled truck licenses to people holding a few specific, vetted work visas. Neither ICE nor California has said whether Kumar's license was one of the 17,000 that were canceled.

The detainer Oregon ignored

After the indictment, ICE filed a detainer with the Deschutes County Jail. A detainer is ICE asking a jail to hold an inmate a short time so agents can pick him up, instead of letting him out the front door. Kumar posted 10% of a $250,000 bail on April 2. "In April 2026, Deschutes County released Kumar from custody without honoring ICE's detainer," the agency said.

The county was following state law. Oregon's 2021 Sanctuary Promise Act, House Bill 3265, bars local police and jails from taking part in immigration enforcement, and the state Justice Department's guidance says requests from federal agencies that lack a judge's order must be "documented, reported, and denied." An ICE detainer is not a judge's order. So the man charged with killing two Americans got out on an ankle monitor.

ICE officers found and arrested him on April 22. He sat in the agency's detention center in Tacoma, Washington, through the summer, and an immigration judge ordered him deported. No appeal was filed, local outlets reported from the case records.

Why ICE brought him back

Deporting Kumar right away would have meant no manslaughter trial. Local prosecutors wanted one: on Sept. 11 they asked a judge to revoke his release, and on Oct. 1 a Deschutes County judge issued a warrant and raised his bail to $1 million. ICE drove him back and booked him into the county jail on Oct. 15.

"Two Americans lost their lives, and their families deserve accountability," said Julio S. Hernandez, the acting head of ICE's Seattle enforcement office. "ICE will continue using every lawful tool available to protect the American people from criminal activity committed by illegal aliens."

Carter's chance to speak to him came through ICE's VOICE office, which works with victims of crimes by illegal aliens. The agency's own post put it plainly: "A mother who lost her son and daughter-in-law in a crash involving an illegal alien chose empathy, even toward the man charged in their deaths."

What's next

Kumar's trial is set for January 2027 in Deschutes County. If he is convicted, he faces Oregon prison time first. Either way, ICE says that "following the conclusion of state criminal proceedings," it will pursue his removal. Billy Carter and Jenny Lower got 16 days of marriage. Their families are still waiting for a verdict.