Legal Insurrection by Leslie Eastman 9/28/2025
California hit with sanctions related to its egregious noncompliance with the requirements for foreign commercial truck drivers.In August of this year, a crash caused by semi-driver Harjinder Singh after he made an illegal U-turn on a Florida toll road killed three people.
An investigation revealed that Singh (a native of India) was in the United States illegally and was issued a commercial driver’s license (CDL) from California — one of 19 states that grant licenses regardless of immigration status. Shortly afterward, the US State Department paused visas for commercial truck drivers.
Then, the Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy ordered a nationwide audit by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The audit revealed that many states have been unlawfully issuing licenses to foreign drivers, and even when regulations are correctly applied, the system itself is flawed. Together, these problems posed such an urgent threat to roadway safety that the agency put together an emergency action plan.
FMCSA’s nationwide review of state processes for issuing non-domiciled CDLs uncovered:
• Systemic non-compliance across several states, including California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington;
• Programming errors and weak quality assurance; and
• Insufficient staff training that led to CDLs being issued to drivers who were noteligible and to drivers with expiration dates extending beyond a driver’s legal stay inthe U.S.
During his announcement of the emergency action plan issued as a result of the findings, Duffy placed the blame squarely on the Biden Administration’s Border Policies.
“Non-citizens will not be eligible for a CDL unless they meet a much stricter set of rules. Second, all states must immediately pause the issuance of non-domiciled CDLs. We have launched a nationwide audit of non-domiciled CDLs to get to the bottom of what we think is causing this crisis. It was alleged that the open border policies of the last administration has led to an exploitation of our nation’s trucking licensing system.”
More:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/09/dot-orders-emergency-action-after-deadly-crash-tied-to-illegally-licensed-truck-driver/
