A pair of Democrat-appointed judges temporarily paused the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal migrant truck drivers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Monday issued an administrative stay against the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) emergency rules against non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs), with two judges voting for the stay and one judge voting against it, according to court documents. The ruling will, for now, allow many illegal migrant CDL holders to remain on American highways.
“The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motions for stay pending review and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of those motions,” the order stated.
Judge Florence Pan, appointed to the bench by the Biden administration, and Judge Robert Wilkins, appointed to the bench by the Obama administration, voted for the administrative stay. Judge Karen Henderson, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, voted against the pause.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued sweeping restrictions in September against commercial drivers after discovering “catastrophic patterns” of state officials illegally handing out licenses to foreign drivers.
Under the emergency rules, non-citizens wishing to earn a non-domiciled CDL had to undergo a mandatory federal immigration status check and have an employment-based visa, according to the DOT. The new requirements — which largely did not apply to lawful permanent residents — aimed to crack down on illegal migrants who managed to obtain CDLs while knowing little to no English, posing serious danger to American roadways.
The DOT’s rule affects the roughly 200,000 individuals who carry a non-domiciled CDL in the U.S., many of them being commercial truck drivers who did not enter the country lawfully.
“This is not a ruling on the merits of the case. Secretary Duffy will continue working to keep unqualified, foreign drivers off American roads,” a DOT spokesperson stated Tuesday to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Regulations around the trucking industry became the focus of national media attention and the Trump administration following a string of fatal accidents, allegedly caused by illegal migrant truckers who scored non-domiciled CDLs.
Harjinder Singh, an Indian national living unlawfully in the country, allegedly took an unlawful U-turn off a Florida turnpike in August, blocking all lanes and instantly killing three individuals in a vehicle that smashed into his big rig. In October, Jashanpreet Singh, another Indian illegal migrant, allegedly plowed into multiple vehicles off a California highway, killing three people in the process.
Labor unions with a long history of supporting Democratic candidates filed a lawsuit against the emergency orders in October, claiming the Trump administration did not follow proper rule-making procedure.
“For the Trump administration, the cruelty is the point,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a public statement at the time. “This is a spiteful and illegal rule issued with no justification except to hurt hundreds of thousands of lawful immigrants with work authorization who only want to build a better life for themselves and their families.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include a response from the Department of Transportation.
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