Trump changes trucking rules to target immigrant drivers

from Adam EchelmanCalMatters

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New federal regulations could leave California with 61,000 fewer truck drivers as the Trump administration bans some immigrants from driving large vehicles. With fewer truckers on the road, consumers may also see higher delivery costs.

After an executive order by President Donald Trump in April, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy began a crackdown on truckers by creating new regulations that prevent refugees, asylum seekers and those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, from holding commercial trucking licenses. The administration is also stepping up enforcement to penalize those with limited English proficiency.

California is the primary target of both actions, sparking a feud between Duffy and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Licenses to drive a massive 80,000 pound truck are being issued to dangerous foreign drivers – oftentimes (sic) illegally. This is a direct threat to the safety of every family on the road,” Duffy wrote in statement in September. “California’s reckless disregard is frankly abhorrent and an insult to the millions of Americans who expect us to keep them safe.”

Newsom was ruthless his answers. “Sounds like the Federal Transport Minister needs a lesson in his own road rules,” his press office wrote in October on social media platform X. “Once again Sean Duffy’s ‘Rules of the Road’ fails to share the truth – its spread is easily debunked untruths in a sad and desperate attempt to please its “dear leader,” the office said in November, responding to more claims by Duffy.

Until recently, the federal government allowed states to issue trucking licenses to non-citizen immigrants, including refugees, asylum seekers and those with DACA. Of the more than 720,000 trucking licenses active in California, about 8%, or approximately 61,000, belong to this immigrant class.

Now, under new federal regulations released in September, nearly all of the 61,000 immigrants will lose their licenses in the coming months or years — some as early as January.

Losing thousands of license holders could disrupt California’s transportation economy, said Rebecca Higgins, vice president of policy at the Eno Center on Transportation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Those layoffs could lead to a sudden drop in the number of drivers in the state, potentially increasing delivery costs, she said.

In addition to the new regulations, the US Department of Transportation has repeatedly claimed to have committed a “national audit” of trucking policies and that at least five other states — Texas, South Dakota, Washington, Pennsylvania and Colorado — have a history of violating federal law by granting licenses to ineligible immigrants. But the transport department has only publicly released audit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles and declined to respond to CalMatters’ requests for data on any other state.

Duffy threatened to withhold $160 million in federal highway safety funds from California because of alleged violations found in the audit. That money, representing about 4 percent of those federal funds, should arrive next fall. Duffy has no legal right to keep the remaining 96%.

Separately, the transportation department said it will no longer award money to California from another federal grant totaling about $40 million because it says California is not implementing Guidelines for English Language Proficiency for truck drivers.

“There is insufficient evidence” to support the new regulations

Over the past decade, the demand for truck drivers has grown as companies like Amazon increasingly offer home delivery for every product imaginable. The transportation industry has expanded along with it, although companies have long struggled to keep workers willing to work the long hours with low pay which offer many entry-level positions.

With more trucks on the road than 10 years ago, truck drivers are involved in a higher rate of crashes and traffic-related deaths. Duffy said the new regulations on immigrant drivers are an attempt to they save lives. But in releasing the new regulations on immigrant truck drivers, Duffy’s transportation department acknowledged that there are “insufficient evidence” to prove that certain types of immigrants drive more dangerously than other drivers. Instead, the department justified the regulations by citing a number of high-profile crashes involving truck drivers who allegedly lacked legal status, including fire crack on I-10 in Ontario in October.

The driver, Jashanpreet Singh, is in jail, charged with vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving that killed three people and injured two others. The US Department of Homeland Security says he does not have legal status and has said it plans to have one hold him back even if the charges are dropped.

On November 13 a letterthe transportation department argued that if California had followed the new regulations, then “the crash could have been avoided.” But Higgins said the federal focus on a few crashes involving immigrants obscures the “root cause” of most traffic accidents, such as speeding and drunken driving.

Thousands of revoked licenses

Following the federal audit of California’s DMV, the state has already revoked 17,000 immigrant truck drivers’ licenses, giving each of them 60 days to stop driving and find a new job. Duffy said California was “caught red-handed” in violating federal trucking license law, while Newom’s press office said that was “a lie.”

The reality is more nuanced. A federal audit found that California issued some trucking licenses with expiration dates that exceed the dates a driver can prove they are legally eligible to remain in the U.S. The California DMV said federal law never prohibited the practice until September, when the transportation department changed the rules. California revoked those 17,000 licenses to comply with the new regulations and never broke the lawsaid the DMV.

After revoking those licenses, California asked the federal government to drop its threat to withhold $160 million in highway safety funds, but the Department of Transportation refused.

Overall, the money at risk represents a small fraction of the total federal dollars going to California’s highways, so small that most Californians are unlikely to notice the road change, Higgins said. “The general public doesn’t notice a 3% or 2% cut in highway funding, and they don’t notice a 1% cut in trucks on the road.”

Still, she said many truckers and trucking companies could be hit hard.

California has already rejected more than 300 applications for truck licenses from refugees, asylum seekers and those with DACA status because of the new Transportation Department rules, said Tony Tinoco, assistant deputy secretary for communications at the state transportation agency. Driving schools say some students have decided not to apply at all, knowing their applications will not be accepted.

Even after revoking 17,000 licenses, California still has about 44,000 immigrant truck drivers whose licenses are still valid. But they likely won’t be able to renew their licenses while federal regulations remain in place. The only exceptions are those who have certain work visas known as H-2a, H-2b, or E-2, which are relatively rare for truck drivers.

A court case of two national unions representing truckers appealed the new federal regulations, and a judge agreed last week to temporarily suspend their enforcement, saying the federal government did not give states enough advance notice before changing its rules.

But the US Department of Transportation said the decision does not apply to any country under disciplinary actionlike California. Tinoco said California will continue to deny immigrants their licenses.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.