California officials are moving to revoke 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses issued to immigrants after a federal review raised alarms that some were granted to people no longer legally authorized to work in the United States.
According to The Associated Press, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles said it discovered that the licenses had expiration dates extending beyond the drivers’ legal residency or work authorization — a violation of federal commercial licensing standards.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s office insists the decision was made for compliance reasons, not political ones. “These licenses were revoked because state officials discovered their expiration dates had passed when the drivers were legally allowed to be in the United States,” the California State Transportation Agency said in a statement.
The move follows intense scrutiny from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who launched a nationwide audit of commercial driver’s licenses after several deadly crashes involving illegal immigrant truck drivers — including a Florida collision that killed three people and a California wreck last month that left three more dead.
Duffy hailed California’s move as a vindication of his warnings. “After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed,” Duffy said Wednesday. “Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
He accused California of failing to enforce English-language and immigration-status requirements, revoking $40 million in federal funding, and threatening to withhold another $160 million if the state fails to complete the license removals.
Newsom’s office fired back, accusing Duffy of playing politics. “Once again, the Sean ‘Road Rules’ Duffy fails to share the truth — spreading easily disproven falsehoods in a sad and desperate attempt to please his dear leader,” said Newsom spokesman Brandon Richards, insisting that all affected drivers had valid federal work authorizations when their licenses were issued.
Duffy’s new federal rules, announced in September, sharply restrict who can obtain a commercial driver’s license, limiting eligibility to holders of H-2A, H-2B, or E-2 visas — agricultural and temporary workers or business investors. The new guidelines also require states to verify immigration status through a federal database, and licenses will expire within one year or when a visa does.
Under those changes, only about 10,000 of the 200,000 noncitizen commercial drivers nationwide would still qualify for a license.
California’s revocations will take effect within 60 days. Newsom’s administration maintains it followed guidance from the Department of Homeland Security when issuing the licenses — but the state now finds itself in the crosshairs of a federal enforcement push with major political and economic implications for the trucking industry.
