California paused revoking immigrant CDLs. It risks $160M in federal funds
California’s decision to postpone revoking thousands of immigrant truck drivers’ licenses could cost the state tens of millions in federal funding. After the state announced it would hold off the cancellations to comply with a class-action lawsuit, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the federal government would not wait to pull funding.
The state sent out notices in November to 17,000 commercial truck drivers that it would suspend their licenses because the expiration dates extended beyond the drivers’ work visas or other permissions to stay in the country. The Associated Press reports that the number later grew to 21,000.
The revocations came after pressure from the federal government, citing what they called deficiencies in California’s training process for non-domiciled licenses, or NDLs. This includes English proficiency standards that have already cost the state $40 million in federal funding. The Transportation Department applied similar pressure to several other states.
The federal agency tried to implement new restrictions on how NDLs are issued, but a judge halted the policy in November.
Lawsuit
Five immigrant truckers and a consortium of advocacy groups sued California’s Department of Motor Vehicles on Dec. 22, saying the revocations were over “clerical errors” that would deprive the immigrants rights and livelihoods.
“The state of California must help these 20,000 drivers because, at the end of the day, the clerical errors threatening their livelihoods are of the CA-DMV’s own making. If the court does not issue a stay, we will see a devastating wave of unemployment that harms individual families, as well as the destabilization of supply chains on which we all rely,” Munmeeth Kaur, legal director of the Sikh Coalition, said in a statement.
In an effort to ensure drivers who are legally entitled to drive don’t have their licenses revoked, the state agreed to postpone its actions until March.
Duffy’s not waiting
News of the delay didn’t please the transportation secretary.
“Gavin Newsom is lying,” Duffy said in a Tuesday post to X. “The deadline to revoke illegally issued, unvetted foreign trucker licenses is still January 5.”
He said California doesn’t have an extension to “keep breaking the law and putting Americans at risk on the roads,” adding that the Department of Transportation would cut nearly $160 million in federal funding if the state missed next week’s deadline.
Immigrant driver crashes
Scrutiny on immigrant truck drivers reached a fever pitch in August when Harjinder Singh, an Indian national who was issued an NDL from California, made an illegal U-turn on a Florida highway. A van slammed into Singh’s trailer, killing all three inside the vehicle.
“Three innocent people were killed in Florida because Gavin Newsom’s California Department of Motor Vehicles issued an illegal alien a Commercial Driver’s License—this state of governance is asinine,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an announcement of Singh’s arrest by ICE. “How many more innocent people must die before Gavin Newsom stops playing games with the safety of the American public?”
Since then, federal, state and local law enforcement have been screening drivers for English proficiency, resulting in traffic stops and subsequent immigration arrests across the country.
Trucking organizations have applauded the scrutiny, saying migrant drivers undercut their bids for hauling freight.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
