On June 25, a trucker picked up 10 pallets of tungsten oxide powder from Mitsubishi Materials Corporation. By June 26, the company had lost contact with the driver. By June 27, investigators tracked the truck using Flock camera surveillance technology.

The driver was Deepak Kumar, a 31-year-old illegal alien from India living in Fresno, California. The tungsten was worth $2,857,500.

Here's where the story gets layered, and every layer is worse than the last. When authorities arrested Kumar, he presented three forms of identification: an invalid work visa, a fraudulent New York State driver's license, and — wait for it — a valid California commercial driver's license.

A valid CDL. Issued by the state of California. To a man who is in the country illegally, carrying a fake driver's license and an expired work visa.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Kumar's criminal history includes prior arrests for "fraud, swindling, identity theft, forgery, and larceny." That's not a rap sheet — that's a résumé. And apparently it wasn't enough to keep California from giving him a license to haul freight on American highways.

The heist itself was almost comically simple. Kumar was scheduled to pick up the tungsten shipment on June 24 but showed up a day late, on June 25. He loaded the 10 pallets and drove off. When Mitsubishi couldn't reach the driver the next day, investigators got involved and located the truck within 48 hours using the Flock automated camera network.

Not exactly Ocean's Eleven. More like Ocean's One Guy With a Stolen ID and a State-Issued License.

Kumar is currently detained in ICE custody in California. The charges are expected to include the tungsten theft along with his existing portfolio of fraud and identity crimes.

The real story isn't one guy stealing industrial metals. It's the system that made it possible. California issued a commercial driver's license to a man whose immigration status should have disqualified him from legal employment of any kind, let alone operating an 18-wheeler hauling nearly $3 million in cargo. His prior arrests for fraud and identity theft were already in the system. Nobody flagged it.

We spend a lot of time arguing about the border. Walls, deportation flights, sanctuary policies. All important. But this case puts a finer point on it. The border is one failure. Sanctuary states like California handing CDLs to people with active fraud histories, invalid work visas, and a fraudulent driver's license are another important point that needs to be addressed. Allowing states and companies to get away with hiring illegal aliens with criminal histories and fake licenses only adds to the immigration nightmare this country is experiencing. And a company handing $2.8 million in tungsten to a driver whose paperwork should have raised every red flag in the building is a third.

California has spent years undermining the federal government's immigration policy and making it easier for undocumented residents to obtain driver's commercial licenses to earn real wages. The argument was always about road safety — better to have trained, licensed drivers than unlicensed ones. Nobody mentioned what happens when you hand commercial hauling credentials to someone the federal government can't even track.

Now we know.