70-hour weeks, taking selfies for Ice: life as a migrant trucker in California

Like many of the state's long-haul truckers, Gurpreet Singh is awaiting asylum hearings amid a life of extreme uncertainty

• This piece is co-published with High Country News

After spending a night in late September driving an 18-wheeler across the country, Gurpreet Singh woke up to see his phone lit up with notifications from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immediately, Singh called back to acknowledge the contact attempts. Then he snapped a selfie to upload into the mobile app immigration officials used to track his whereabouts.

Earlier that morning, worn out from a nonstop 11-hour trip that started in Bakersfield, California, Singh, a Punjabi immigrant awaiting asylum, had gotten the time zones confused. When the notification he expected didn't arrive, he simply submitted an unprompted selfie and fell into a deep sleep. As his co-driver continued the journey from St Louis to Chicago, the first notification arrived, followed by a flood of others, including missed calls from a cousin whom Ice had contacted while searching for him.