In April of 2025, President Trump signed an executive order that didn't make a big splash at the time, and that many on the Left side of the house thought was just more anti-immigrant grandstanding.
I mean, how dare he demand someone speak English just to drive a truck?
President Donald J. Trump Enforces Commonsense Rules of the Road for America’s Truck Drivers
ENFORCING ENGLISH PROFICIENCY FOR SAFETY: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to keep American families safe on the road by ensuring anyone behind the wheel of a commercial vehicle is properly qualified and proficient in English.
- The Order directs the Secretary of Transportation to rescind guidance that watered down the law requiring English proficiency for commercial drivers.
- It mandates revising out-of-service criteria to ensure drivers violating English proficiency rules are placed out-of-service, enhancing roadway safety.
- It instructs the Secretary of Transportation to review state issuance of non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses to identify any irregularities and ensure American drivers are validly licensed and qualified.
- The Order directs the Secretary of Transportation to carry out additional administrative, regulatory, or enforcement actions to improve the working conditions of America’s truck drivers.
It was just a little over a year ago that this horrific crash changed the entire way the country looks at the massive semis barreling by them on the interstates and backroads. And especially who is driving them.
The driver of that truck in Florida, who crossed three lanes of traffic as he attempted his U-turn in the middle of an interstate roaring with traffic, was an illegal alien named Harjinder Singh. After being extradited back to Florida from California, Singh is still being held without bond as he awaits trial for the deaths of the three Haitian immigrants caused by his maneuver that day.
Harjinder Singh, the truck driver accused in the Florida Turnpike crash that killed three people and sparked a national debate over commercial driver licensing, immigration status and trucking regulations, appeared in person inside a St. Lucie County courtroom Wednesday afternoon.
...Federal records cited by Florida alleged Singh entered the United States illegally in 2018 and later obtained commercial driver’s licenses in Washington and California. After the crash, questions emerged about whether Singh could properly read English road signs and whether states were following federal commercial licensing standards.
In the ensuing uproar over the deaths, the consequent revelations about Singh's status and what turned out to be a bogus commercial driver's license (CDL) issued by the illegal enabling state of California, and then the Pandora's Box of nightmare-inducing laxity and collusion among blue states in putting illegal aliens behind the wheels of monster vehicles at highway speed, Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, has worked tirelessly to force some semblance of coherence into regulating the interstate trucking world.
It has been a Herculean effort.
Within a month of the Florida crash, Duffy's department and its related agencies had already identified ghastly lax licensing practices.
BREAKING: Transportation Secretary Duffy announces terrifying findings of audit
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 26, 2025
- States are issuing CDL’s to people who are in our country illegally
- Thousands of licenses issued that should never have been issued
- Newscum’s California was the WORST offender
- eligibility… pic.twitter.com/f323WNlxog
- eligibility requirements are a joke
- states are not following procedure
Effective immediately, the eligibility for non-domiciled CDLs is completely overhauled.
His guys started busting state DMV employees for working with sketchy commercial driving schools...
...Holy SMOKES. This is bad.
A Big Apple driving school paid off DMV examiners to fraudulently fast-track driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants — even if they had no clue how to drive, Staten Island prosecutors said Tuesday.
...busting blue state governors for issuing CDLs to illegal aliens...
🚨 BREAKING: It just keeps getting worse for Tim Walz as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says that 1/3 of Minnesota’s non-domiciled CDLs were issued illegally.
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) December 2, 2025
“Minnesota is on notice… you have 30 days to fix this or lose $30 million in federal funding.”
WOW! pic.twitter.com/VItEZiNKNL
...and working on developing Department of Transportation (DOT) partnerships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Border Patrol (CBP), and local state police for coordinating resources to do truck and weigh-stop immigration enforcement and enforcing new English-language comprehension requirement checks.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has expanded partnerships with state law enforcement agencies that allow trained local officers to perform immigration enforcement functions under federal supervision.
The Memoranda of Agreements are between ICE and the Indiana State Police, Oklahoma Department of Public Safety and Wyoming Highway Patrol under its 287(g) Task Force Model. It allows state and local police to enforce immigration issues when they arise during traffic stops, commercial vehicle inspections or other safety-related enforcement activities.
Wyoming Highway Patrol spokesman Aaron Brown told FreightWaves the program is already being used by 17 troopers and can apply during routine commercial vehicle inspections and traffic stops.
Brown said the agency’s current agreement was signed in July 2025 and follows previous agreements with ICE dating back to 2024.
“For our troopers this program will work as a part of daily duties already being performed,” Brown told FreightWaves. During a typical Department of Transportation inspection, questions regarding citizenship may arise organically, and if a driver is found to be in the country illegally, “then the driver will be detained and transferred to ICE custody.”
Duffy has made significant progress, but he plows ahead because there is just so much to do and in every direction.
Since President Trump issued the Executive Order to restore integrity to the trucking industry in April 2025, Secretary Duffy and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration have:
- Revoked over 30,000 illegally issued commercial driver’s licenses across non-compliant states.
- Removed nearly 10,000 fraudulent or unqualified CDL training providers from the federal registry.
- Enforced strict English Language Proficiency standards, placing over 26,000 non-compliant operators out of service to ensure every driver on American highways can read road signs and communicate with law enforcement.
- Closed the non-domiciled CDL loophole, cutting off unvetted foreign operators tied to dozens of fatal crashes.
The illegal alien behind-the-wheel carnage continued even as more and more blue states were simultaneously revealed for their sins against the interests of public safety and then dug their heels in against doing anything to rectify their situation or cooperate in any way with the administration's efforts to make the highways and byways safer.
Almost a year to the day after that Florida crash which started it all, the blue states who favor illegal alien rights over those of their citizens have done it again.
One of Duffy's agencies, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), requested that all states submit their Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS) records. The idea is to reconcile all the information and weed out those current CDL holders who do not meet the updated federal requirements and, of course, any illegal aliens who are still in possession of a current state-issued CDL.
Twenty-two states' attorneys general filed a lawsuit to stop them from accessing the database.
A coalition of 22 state attorneys general and the state of Pennsylvania filed two lawsuits Thursday seeking to block the Trump administration from obtaining a database containing the personal information of roughly 17 million commercial driver’s license holders nationwide.
According to the coalition, FMCSA demanded that the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), which operates CDLIS on behalf of the states, turn over records for every commercial driver in the system going back five years.
The states claim the agency threatened to terminate more than $10 million in federal funding and contracts if AAMVA refused to comply. DHS later issued a subpoena seeking the same information.
The legal challenge comes as AAMVA reportedly indicated it would comply with the federal government’s demand absent court intervention, prompting the states to seek an emergency order blocking the transfer of the records.
The AGs claim the database is strictly for the states and the feds aren't allowed in. Duffy called BS on those claims.
“Every administration since 1988 has had access to this basic database, so let’s be clear on what this ridiculous lawsuit is really all about. These radical state AGs want to make it harder for my Department to enforce the rules of the road and easier for dangerous illegal immigrant truck drivers to operate a big rig,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy. “They may not care about keeping you and your family safe, but President Trump and I do. We will fight this lawsuit tooth and nail to prevent more senseless crashes by unqualified drivers.”
And noted that the database itself is maintained at the behest of the federal government, therefore contractually required to furnish records when requested.
AAMVA operates the CDLIS database on behalf of the federal government; it is contractually and legally obligated to furnish the requested records at FMCSA's direction, with federal protection against state-level liability.
And Sec. Trans was absolutely incandescent last night on Ingraham about the situation.
🚨 HOLY SMOKES. Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy just exposed that a whopping 22 blue states are suing the Trump admin to keep illegal aliens driving 80,000 pound semitrucks with CDLs
— Paul White Gold Eagle (@PaulGoldEagle) August 14, 2026
They're concealing the rolls 🤯
DEFUND until it's all handed over!
"Many of them went to a sham… pic.twitter.com/UvchL7gxwe
..."Many of them went to a sham driving school, so many of them aren't qualified, they don't have the skills and the knowledge to operate an 80,000-pound big rig on American roads!"
"And so the DOT, we are entitled to get all of the DMV files from all of the states. It goes back to the 80s. I've asked all the states to provide that information to me. As you mentioned, 22 states, liberal states have SUED me to make sure I can't get that information because they know that we're going to take illegals off American roads!"
"And so what's happening here is you have these liberal states actually siding with an illegal truck driver over the safety of an American citizen."
"It shows how perverse these radical leftists have become."
In New Jersey, my favorite Republican Assemblywoman bodied the state's AG when that woman threw up a big brag over the blocking maneuver.
Dawn Fantasia read chapter and verse from the Book of BOOMITY.
You want to know why the feds want MVC records, @NewJerseyOAG??? Because in 2025, 17 fatal crashes killed 30 people involving non-domiciled drivers who wouldn't qualify under current federal rules AND
— Dawn Fantasia (@DawnFantasia_NJ) August 14, 2026
NJ has issued non-domiciled CDLs to non-citizens who would NOT qualify under… https://t.co/ykb2AdMW8S
...NJ has issued non-domiciled CDLs to non-citizens who would NOT qualify under current federal rules.
http://federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/13/2026-02965/restoring-integrity-to-the-issuance-of-non-domiciled-commercial-drivers-licenses-cdl
Why were the rules changed as of March 2026??? Because the system was FAILING WITH DEADLY CONSEQUENCES. Federal audits found states issuing CDLs without reliably verifying eligibility & allowing licenses to remain valid beyond a driver's authorized stay. AND PEOPLE DIED.
https://fmcsa.dot.gov/newsroom/trumps-transportation-secretary-sean-p-duffy-puts-safety-first-finalizes-rule-stop
FMCSA's current non-domiciled CDL review actually lists NEW JERSEY among the states that received a “preliminary determination of substantial noncompliance” in issuing non-domiciled CDLs:
https://fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/enforcement/non-domiciled-cdl-review
Just next door we have EXHIBIT A: in New York, 200 records were audited; 107 violated federal requirements. FIFTY-THREE PERCENT. NY's system could even default to an 8-year CDL REGARDLESS of when the driver's lawful status expired.
WHAT ARE THE NJ NUMBERS???
1️⃣How many active non-domiciled CDLs are there? 2️⃣When were they issued? 3️⃣When do they expire?
4️⃣What immigration/document category was used?
5️⃣How many holders wouldn't qualify today?
6️⃣Are people currently driving tractor-trailers & buses on NJ roads with CDLs they couldn't obtain today?
When we're talking about licenses to operate massive commercial vehicles, verifying eligibility isn't federal overreach.
New Jerseyans left their thoughts in the comments on AG Davenport's Xweet, which pretty much mirror what this lawsuit represents.
What a great blatant admission that you love illegal aliens over NJ citizens who have to deal with crime in the metropolitan areas.
— Director Ryan 🇺🇸 (@6Transitz) August 13, 2026
Supremacy clause will deny your lawsuit
Every last one of these states, as a party to this, has laid the marker down for whose side they are on.
And Duffy, bless his indefatigable heart, will just keep plugging away.
