Hundreds of thousands of truckers could be removed from American roads under the Trump administration’s newly aggressive enforcement and safety campaign.
President Donald Trump on Jan 24 brought new attention to his administration’s crackdown by highlighting the catastrophic injuries of young Dalilah Coleman, who was severely injured when the car she was riding in was hit by a foreign-born truck driver speeding through a construction zone in California.
Coleman, who was 5 at the time, attended the State of the Union speech on Feb. 24 as a guest of Trump, who noted she has a traumatic brain injury and cerebral palsy as a result of the crash.
“Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs,” Trump said during his address. “That’s why tonight, I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the ‘Dalilah Law,’ barring any state from granting commercial drivers licenses to illegal aliens.”
According to federal officials, the trucker who hit her family’s car had crossed into the United States from Mexico in 2022, was released by the Biden administration and ultimately acquired a commercial driver’s license (CDL) from California.
As with regular driver’s licenses, states can issue CDLs to truckers even if they lack legal permission to live in the country. The White House recently warned states to stop issuing CDLs to unvetted foreigners, with exceptions for Canadian and Mexican truckers who routinely cross the border for deliveries.
Who drives America’s trucks?
There are about 3.5 million licensed truckers in the United States, from bus drivers to RV delivery haulers and over-the-road semi-trailer owners.
The Department of Transportation has also been encouraging states, which oversee CDLs and trucking, to more aggressively enforce existing laws requiring English-language proficiency by drivers.
Earlier this month, federal inspectors proposed closing more than 550 trucking schools after concluding they were largely sham or unqualified operations. Federal officials say there are at least 194,000 licensed motor carriers that could be affected by the crackdown on non-American drivers.
The 37,000-member American Trucking Associations trade group has supported Trump’s efforts, arguing that better trucking enforcement and stronger regulations will help make roads safer for all drivers. CDL holders are subject to strict hour limitations while driving, and must undergo periodic medical checks to ensure they’re safe to drive.
“We support President Trump’s efforts to ensure that only properly trained, fully qualified, and English-proficient drivers are behind the wheel of 80,000-pound commercial motor vehicles,” ATA President and CEO Chris Spear said in a statement. “We stand ready to work with the administration and Congress to advance policies that raise standards and keep our highways safe.”
Cracking down on immigrant CDL-holders
The law proposed by Trump on Jan. 24 would complement a series of regulatory and enforcement changes being implemented by the federal Department of Transportation, which oversees motor carriers.
Although CDLs are generally governed by federal laws and regulations, they are issued by states. Drivers and trucking schools found loopholes in the existing system that allowed some non-citizens to obtain CDLs without background checks of their driving records in the home countries, according to federal officials. In other cases, truckers were illegally getting Mexican trucking licenses and then using those to qualify for reciprocal American CDLs.
Federal officials last summer ordered a temporary halt to issuing CDLs to foreign-born truckers.
“For far too long, America has allowed dangerous foreign drivers to abuse our truck licensing systems – wreaking havoc on our roadways. This safety loophole ends today,” Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a statement.
Federal officials said that at least 17 fatal crashes and 30 deaths in 2025 were caused by truckers who would now be ineligible for a CDL under the new rules, which would primarily impact drivers from countries other than Mexico or Canada, whose truckers often operate under a special cross-border system.
American-citizen or green card CDL holders were linked to more than 85,000 injuries and 4,700 fatalities last year, according to federal statistics.
Sikhs critical of the new approach
Critics of the president’s moves say they are aimed at the wrong target: Non-citizen CDL holders accounted for fewer than 2% of all large-truck crashes nationwide last year while accounting for nearly 4% of all CDL holders, according to federal regulatory filings.
Among the strongest critics of the measures are India-born Sikhs, who make up about 150,000 members of the trucking community, according to regulatory data. Tens of thousands of Sikhs sought asylum in the United States during the Biden presidency, many of them crossing the Mexican border without advance permission.
In testimony to federal regulators, some critics also worried the crackdown on foreign drivers would cause them to lose their jobs and homes in one fell swoop ‒ many truckers live in their semis ‒ while raising freight costs from American consumers.
The White House has repeatedly singled out Sikhs truckers as a cause for concern, including California-licensed trucker Harjinder Singh, who is facing charges of causing a fatal Aug. 12, 2025, crash in Florida that killed three people. Federal officials said in a social media post that Singh is an illegal immigrant who does not speak English well enough to have been granted the California CDL he held.
The U.S.-based Sikhs For Justice group has donated $100,000 to the victims in the accident Singh is accused of causing. The group has also proposed donating $1 billion to Trump’s Institute for Peace as a condition of holding a referendum on carving out a homeland for Sikhs from portions of India.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Thousands of truckers, targeted by Trump, could lose licenses
Reporting by Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
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