The illegal-alien truck-driver problem in California is far worse than anyone might have thought. Weeks after an illegal was charged in the DUI vehicular homicide of three people, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that around 17,000 commercial driver licenses in the illegal-friendly state will be revoked.
And if California doesn’t revoke all unlawfully issued licenses, it will lose $160 million in federal funding, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy warned.
The frightening number of revocations suggests that the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles is handing out CDLs willy-nilly to anyone who asks. And the problem isn’t confined to California. New York and other states controlled by far-left elected officials are handing them out the same way, as hundreds of highway arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows.
The Licenses
California’ DMV, Duffy announced, has confessed to unlawfully issuing 17,000 non-domiciled CDLs to “dangerous foreign drivers” Duffy announced yesterday.
A non-domiciled CDL is one given to a driver who does live in the state.
“Notices have been issued to the 17,000 non-domiciled CDL holders that their license no longer meets federal requirements and will expire in 60 days,” DOT said:
[The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration] requires California to provide its full audit of all its non-domiciled CDLs so the agency can verify that every illegally issued license has been revoked and that the failures that allowed these licenses to be issued are corrected.
FMCSA’s nationwide non-domiciled CDL audit uncovered systemic policy, procedural, and programming errors in California’s non-domiciled CDL program which allowed thousands of CDLs to be illegally issued to foreign drivers. The audit also found that more than one in four of the non-domiciled CDL records sampled in California failed to comply with federal regulations. This includes issuing licenses that extended well beyond a foreigner’s work permit.
Newsom and California, Duffy said, “were caught red-handed after weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong,” Duffy wrote on X. And the 17,000 revocations are “just the beginning,” he continued. If the state doesn’t revoke all the unlawfully issued CDL, he will block $160 million in federal subsidies.
Whether the threat will move Newsom is unclear.
On October 15, the department announced that California would lose $40 million in federal funding from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration because it is not enforcing federal regulations that truck drivers pass an English proficiency test to receive a commercial driver license.
California Not Enforcing
California has, indeed, refused to enforce the Trump administration’s guidance on the federal English-language requirement for CDLs. President Trump’s executive order of April 28 noted that states are refusing to enforce that standard, and ordered Duffy to issue the new guidance and vigorously enforce it.
But California simply ignored the guidance, Overdrive Online reported in July.
Despite the order, “California, still isn’t enforcing it,” the website disclosed:
California Highway Patrol said it’s not putting drivers out-of-service for not speaking English despite new federal guidance on the rule.
On October 21, police charged an illegal-alien truck driver called Jashanpreet Singh with manslaughter while driving under the influence. He left three people dead.
Video of the crash on 10 Freeway in Ontario, California, shows the “migrant’s” 18-wheeler plow into a white SUV, then into a white work pickup, then into another 18-wheeler, then, in flames, careen to the right, and smash into yet another semi on the side of the highway. Cops allege that Singh wasn’t just driving while intoxicated. He was also speeding.
Those three deaths were the second triple vehicular homicide involving an Indian illegal truck driver. In Florida, Harjinder Singh was charged in the death of three people. When Singh illegally U-turned at a spot marked “official use only,” a motorist with two passengers smashed into the trailer of his 18-wheeler. Singh abysmally failed the mandatory English proficiency test after the wreck.
Newsom claims that “Sean ‘Road Rules’ Duffy” [is] spreading easily disproven falsehoods in a sad and desperate attempt to please his ‘dear leader.’”
Replied Duffy:
Blatantly lying to the American people won’t help Newsom’s keyboard warriors get their next jobs.
We’ve said all along, @USDOT is reprimanding California for violating @FMCSA’s ORIGINAL rules.
My emergency rule came as a consequence in part for California’s total disregard of those federal laws — it was THAT BAD.
More Arrests in Oklahoma
Other states that care about the safety of motorists are helping the administration take dangerous illegals off their roads.
In the closing days of October, ICE and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol tossed a second dragnet over the Sooner State’s highways, catching 70 illegals during a two-day operation. Many had CDLs from blue-state sanctuaries such as Illinois, New York, and of course, Newsom’s California, ICE reported.
Of the 70, 26 had CDLs and eight were driving a commercial motor vehicle without one. As well, 36 of the illegals were dangerous criminals convicted for “assault and battery, soliciting prostitution, and DUI.”
Two of the illegals “are wanted overseas for fraud and burglary.”
They came from 15 countries: India, China, Mexico, Colombia, Georgia, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.
Earlier last month, ICE reported the arrest of 120 illegals, 91 of whom had CDLs.
One of them famously carried a New York CDL with his surname entered as “No Name Given.”
A second major operation in Indiana in October nailed 146 illegals driving commercial vehicles. Said Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem:
The CDLs that were issued to those individuals were issued from over a dozen different states. Many of those individuals could have been licensed in a state somewhere and received their CDL in another state, but overwhelmingly these individuals have come from sanctuary states such as California and Illinois and New York.
