Transportation Department Catches California Issuing CDLs to Foreign Nationals

Let’s get the facts straight. California has been caught red-handed issuing commercial driver’s licenses to individuals who should never have received them, and now the federal government is forcing the state to clean up its mess.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Wednesday that California has admitted to issuing 17,000 non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses to foreign-born applicants in direct violation of federal law. These licenses are now being revoked, with all holders receiving 60-day expiration notices.

“After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed,” Duffy stated. “Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked.”

This is not a minor administrative error. This is a systematic failure that has put American lives at risk on our highways and roads. The consequences have already proven deadly.

The crackdown follows a tragic incident in Florida where an Indian national, 28-year-old Harjinder Singh, made an illegal U-turn that killed three Americans. Singh is in the United States illegally and obtained his commercial trucking permit from California. Authorities arrested him in August.

Florida responded by filing a lawsuit against California last month, with Attorney General James Uthmeier making the obvious point that responsible states are being undermined by California’s recklessness. “Here in Florida, we can do everything right, we can back the blue, we can enforce the law, we can combat illegal immigration, but we still suffer when Gavin Newsom and liberals on the West Coast allow these illegals in, encourage them, enable them to get these driver’s licenses and then they cross the country and ultimately take lives,” Uthmeier explained.

The logic is simple. Federal law requires commercial drivers to be domiciled in the United States. California knowingly violated this requirement thousands of times over. The state then spent weeks denying any wrongdoing until the Transportation Department forced them to admit the truth.

Duffy made clear this investigation is far from over. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semitrucks and school buses.”

The Transportation Department will now monitor and review California’s audit of its CDL system to verify that every illegally issued license has been revoked and that the systemic failures enabling this situation are corrected. This is proper federal oversight in action.

The broader problem extends beyond California. Thousands of illegal CDLs have been issued across the United States, allowing individuals with no legal right to be in this country to operate massive commercial vehicles carrying cargo coast to coast. This problem has been fueled by states that prioritize progressive immigration policies over public safety and federal law.

The question now is accountability. Will California face consequences for this violation? Will other states be investigated? And most importantly, how many more illegal CDL holders are currently operating commercial vehicles on American roads?

The Newsom administration’s approach to immigration enforcement has consistently prioritized ideology over the safety of American citizens. This scandal is simply the latest example of that dangerous calculus. When states refuse to enforce federal law and actively work to undermine it, Americans pay the price.