Immigrant truck drivers are losing their licenses under Trump’s crackdown

New York — 

In his 20 years as a truck driver, Luis Sanchez has lugged every part from restaurant meals to gravel throughout the nation.

It’s an isolating job with lengthy hours; he passes the time listening to the radio. At truck stops and warehouses, he meets different drivers, lots of them immigrants like himself.

“We don’t go home every day like normal work,” stated Sanchez, whose house is close to Fort Worth, Texas and is initially from El Salvador. “Sometimes we had to sacrifice family for the job we had.”

Sanchez ticked off all of the containers since he utilized for his industrial driver’s license 20 years in the past: a legitimate work allow, Social Security quantity and he proudly claims he has had an ideal security report. But now, his livelihood is gone.

He is one in every of 1000’s of noncitizen truck drivers – which embrace Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, asylees, asylum seekers and refugees – who’ve misplaced or been unable to resume their industrial driving licenses within the final 12 months as a part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Those licenses are required to drive tractor-trailers and semis.

The crackdown began whereas the administration cited back-to-back high-profile fatal accidents that concerned truck drivers who authorities stated weren’t everlasting authorized residents. Among the brand new laws the Trump administration handed was a February rule that restricts issuing and renewing non-domiciled CDLs to holders of only a handful of visas. The administration additionally ordered some states to downgrade CDL licenses with expiration dates that outlasted drivers’ work permits, together with different points.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) stated the rule was designed to handle “unqualified foreign drivers” who “pose a significant safety threat,” citing the sequence of deadly automotive accidents.

But Sanchez, who renewed his CDL two years in the past, nonetheless misplaced his. He’s not alone: The US Department of Transportation estimates its new visa laws might take as much as practically 200,000 licenses, or about 5% of energetic CDL holders, off the street.

The United States is a rustic depending on its freeway transport – truckers moved virtually 73% of the nation’s freight in 2024, and it’s an business already dogged by excessive turnover and worker shortages.

The new guidelines additionally threaten the livelihoods of a giant a part of America’s foreign-born trucking inhabitants. Nearly one in six CDL holders is foreign born. Communities like Punjabi Sikhs have formed the business.

In August 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a Sikh truck driver who allegedly tried to make an unlawful U-turn on the Florida Turnpike and killed three folks; Florida Troopers said he illegally entered the United States in 2018. Just over two months later, another driver, whom the DOT called an asylum seeker, allegedly induced a pile-up that killed three in California.

“Licenses to operate a massive, 80,000-pound truck are being issued to dangerous foreign drivers – often times illegally. This is a direct threat to the safety of every family on the road, and I won’t stand for it,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a September assertion following the Florida crash.

After the accidents, Duffy took complete steps to handle freeway and street security involving the trucking business. Some of these actions have been praised by the business and security advocates. For instance, the DOT has addressed “chameleon carriers,” industrial trucking fleets that use a number of registration numbers to evade laws and security necessities. The company has additionally shut down hundreds of faux “CDL mills.”

But some critics argue different DOT actions have been overly broad and unfairly punish drivers who had been caught up in administrative errors by way of not fault of their personal. DOT audits throughout a number of states, from California to Texas to North Carolina, discovered 1000’s of licenses whose expiration dates didn’t line up the holders’ employee allow expiration date, among other issues. The company ordered these states to revoke or not renew these CDLs.

Some states, together with New York, did not revoke licenses and are suing for the hundreds of thousands in federal freeway funding {dollars} it misplaced. Texas, the place Sanchez lives, did.

In December 2025, Sanchez says he noticed a TikTok video from one other non-domiciled CDL driver who stated they discovered their license was downgraded after a routine pullover on the street by a DOT officer. Concerned, Sanchez checked his personal – and realized he, too, had misplaced his CDL.

The Texas Department of Safety reportedly notified affected drivers within the state, however Sanchez stated he by no means acquired a letter. NCS has reached out to Texas DPS for remark.

The FMCSA rule solely permits individuals who maintain short-term H-2A and H-2B visas, in addition to E-2, to resume and apply for non-domiciled CDLs. That leaves out most non-citizens with work permits.

The federal authorities says the rule and enforcement are wanted for freeway and street security. In a separate order last May, the DOT stated it has begun imposing longstanding necessities, corresponding to English language proficiency. The company earlier rescinded a 2016 coverage that relaxed penalties for failing the English requirement.

In December 2025, Duffy said the DOT pulled 9,500 drivers off the street for allegedly failing the English proficiency requirement when stopped by law enforcement.

But shutting out all non-domiciled truckers from driving can be “like taking a sledgehammer when you need a scalpel,” Stephen Burks, a former truck driver and trucking business economist on the University of Minnesota Morris, instructed NCS.

If highways and interstates are the veins of the delicate home provide chain community, long-haul truck drivers rumbling coast-to-coast in large 18-wheelers are the blood that runs by way of it.

But immigrant employees are caught in political crossfire and say it’s collective punishment. The DOT cited 17 examples of deadly crashes, with a number of the most notable ones involving Indian-born drivers. (The agency’s data shows a complete of three,986 deadly crashes involving giant vans and buses in 2025).

Indiana GOP Sen. Jim Banks launched a invoice in February named after Dalilah Coleman, a primary grader who was severely injured in a semitruck crash brought on by an Indian driver in 2024. The regulation goals to limit CDLs to residents, lawful everlasting residents, and sure visa holders, and revoke CDLs from folks with short-term standing nationwide. President Donald Trump urged passage of the regulation when he invited Coleman and her father to the State of the Union Address this 12 months. (The invoice has not yet seen a vote.)

The rule has devasted Punjabi Sikhs in the US, a non secular minority from North India. About one-fifth of the Sikh inhabitants within the US is concerned within the trucking business, based on the North American Punjabi Trucking Association.

The overwhelming majority of trucking corporations within the US are small companies, lots of them depending on immigrant labor. One Punjabi man in California who spoke to NCS labored as a driver and is now a dispatcher, a job that now lets him keep at residence together with his household.

During the final quarter of 2025, he stated his firm misplaced a 3rd of its 31 truckers as a result of downgraded CDLs. Business slowed down, and the results trickled all the way down to the remainder of the corporate, which has laid off different employees.

A number of months in the past, 50% of the corporate’s truck drivers had been Punjabi. Now they’re solely 30%, the person stated.

“Accidents can be caused by anyone, and it has (been) caused by many other nationalities,” the dispatcher, who needed to stay unnamed due to worry of harassment, stated. “But we were brought out to be the one that’s like, ‘Hey, these immigrants don’t know how to drive.’”

Many of the drivers who misplaced their CDLs had stayed in trucking for a secure profession to assist their households, the dispatcher stated. Now they are driving for Uber or DoorDash, which pay a fraction of a trucker’s wage. They’ve additionally relied on neighborhood teams, corresponding to United Sikhs, to attach them with assets.

The trucking neighborhood helps security compliance efforts and English-language necessities, Raman Dhillon, CEO of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, instructed NCS.

The issues with trucking security are systemic, corresponding to the fake trucking schools, Dhillon stated.

But longtime drivers who misplaced their CDLs adopted the principles and “did not get their licenses from a convenience store,” Dhillon stated. “They got it from the DMV… and they got the work permit from the federal government. (How is it) their fault at this point?”

Several states began downgrading CDLs after the FMCSA warned that they had been violating laws in 2025. In California, the place $160 million in federal freeway funds had been at stake, each the state and activist teams filed lawsuits.

The saga started in September 2025, when the FMCSA found that greater than 1 / 4 of California’s non-domiciled CDLs had been improperly issued. The company discovered that lots of these non-compliant CDLs expired later than drivers’ lawful presence paperwork, an administrative error.

While California sued the DOT, the Sikh Coalition and Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit towards the state, claiming the CDL cancellations had been illegal. While the California courtroom ordered the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to permit truckers to re-apply for their CDLs, the federal government is barring the DMV from processing those applications.

California is in a bind. If it follows the courtroom order, the Trump administration might decertify the state’s total CDL program; that will have an effect on all truck drivers — not simply sure immigrants.

Sanchez, who spoke to NCS in fluent English, stated it’s been 5 months since he discovered his CDL obtained downgraded. He’s been making use of for various jobs with no luck, as his work expertise was in trucking.

“They’re not just taking away my driver license. That was my career,” he stated. “That’s what I’ve been doing most of my life.”

As he tries to discover a job, the payments are racking up. He helps his household in El Salvador, together with his mom. He’s down 1000’s of {dollars} from the modest trucking enterprise he tried to start out two years in the past, which has since shuttered.

“I’m paying my bills with a credit card right now,” Sanchez stated. “I don’t have any more money right now.”