New York will lose more than $73.5 million in federal money after the Department of Transportation said Thursday that the state has refused to revoke nearly 33,000 suspected commercial driver’s licenses for immigrants.
The department said that out of the 200 licenses reviewed during the audit, more than half of the immigrants allowed to stay in the country have significant problems such as being valid for a long time. The state was therefore ordered to review all such licenses and revoke invalid ones.
The federal government has reviewed records related to these non-resident CDLs in every state since Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put the spotlight on the issue after an August crash in Florida that killed three people. Many states have either complied or are in negotiations with the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, but California has lost $200 million. Several other states — including Pennsylvania, Minnesota and North Carolina — have been warned they are at risk of losing some funding.
“I made a promise to the American people that I would hold any state leader accountable for failing to keep them safe from reckless, unqualified foreign drivers. I’m keeping that promise today,” Duffy said.
Duffy said immigrants make up about 20% of truck drivers nationwide, but these non-resident licensees may represent only about 5% of all commercial driver licenses, or about 200,000 drivers. New York issued 32,606 of them. New rules announced by the Department of Transportation will prevent 97% of those foreign drivers from ever getting a commercial license again.
New York officials have defended their licensing practices and that they are complying with federal law, and audits during the first Trump administration have backed that up.
This isn’t the first time the Department of Transportation has threatened to withhold or withhold funding from New York since Trump returned to office.
Duffy blocked $18 billion in funding for subway expansion in Manhattan and tunnels for Amtrak and commuter rail trains under the Hudson River. The Trump administration agreed Thursday to restore funding for the subway project. In February, a judge ordered continued funding for the tunnel project. Duffy also threatened to pull federal funding from New York if it didn’t abandon congestion pricing for rides in large parts of Manhattan and address crime in the subway system. The state fought those efforts in court and won.
Sean Butler, a spokesman for Gov. Cathy Hochul, said the crackdown on commercial driver’s licenses appears to be part of a broader effort to attack blue states.
“This Secretary Duffy continues a year-long pattern of threatening to withhold money that keeps our roads, subways, and other infrastructure safe for New Yorkers. We will fight, and we will win again,” Butler said.
Trucking industry groups have praised the Department of Transportation’s efforts to remove unqualified drivers from the road, crack down on questionable trucking schools and go after trucking companies that violate rules and operate only by changing names. Unlicensed or unqualified drivers who cannot speak English are allowed to get behind the wheel of 80,000-pound (about 39,916 kg) trucks, the industry said.
“These” enforcement actions will remove bad actors from the streets and restore accountability to the system. Today’s action is an important step toward safer highways and a stronger, more professional trucking industry,” said Todd Spencer, president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association trade group.
But immigrant groups say some drivers are now being unfairly targeted. Sikh truckers have been in the spotlight since both the driver in the Florida crash and another fatal crash in California in October were Sikhs.
