Ninety-five illegal immigrant truck drivers were arrested in August alone, most carrying California-issued commercial licenses — and 239 Americans have been killed in crashes caused by non-English-speaking commercial truck drivers since January 2025, according to federal data that exposes the open border as a direct threat to every family on the highway.
The arrests came during a multi-agency operation in Arizona's Yuma Sector between August 10 and 14. Of the 95 illegal immigrant drivers caught, 76 held California commercial driver's licenses, six from New York, and the rest from scattered states, according to CBP. Authorities also seized 74 pounds of methamphetamine and 169 pounds of marijuana, arrested four human smugglers and 17 smuggled illegal immigrants, and took 143 suspects from 18 countries into custody.
On Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy shut down 270 commercial driver's licensing schools — 110 for graduating illegal immigrants who couldn't speak English, and another 160 for running sham training operations, some claiming a single truck or a parking lot constituted a training center. The 110 schools shut over language proficiency had collectively passed at least 5,000 enrollees later found unable to speak English.
"If you're here illegally and you can't speak the language and you're not well-trained, you don't deserve to be in a big rig, driving American roads, endangering American citizens," Duffy said at a press conference in Detroit alongside Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
The Biden administration allowed trucking schools to self-certify that they met federal standards. Duffy said that failure meant background checks were never conducted, and unqualified foreign nationals were handed the keys to 80,000-pound vehicles. Federal law has required English proficiency for commercial drivers for decades — the last administration simply stopped enforcing it.
The cost is not abstract. At the Detroit press conference stood five-year-old Delilah Coleman, who suffered a brain injury in 2024 when Indian illegal immigrant Partap Singh caused a pileup with his 18-wheeler in California. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator Derek Barrs identified specific schools: Platinum Plus Truck Driving School in California certified 36 drivers later cited for English proficiency violations — one of those trainees killed someone in Oklahoma. ASC Technical Institute in Texas certified 58 such drivers; one ran a stop sign and killed a local man in Texas.
Europe Says, reporting on the CBP arrests, framed the story around the multi-agency enforcement action and drug seizures. The New York Post led with the school shutdowns and the English-proficiency deaths, naming victims and specific fraud factories. What neither outlet dwelled on is the bipartisan failure: California has been issuing commercial licenses to foreign nationals who broke our laws to enter the country for years, and until January, Washington had no interest in stopping it.
The DOT is now finalizing a rule that would restrict CDLs to holders of H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visas — categories with actual vetting requirements — and eliminate the Employment Authorization Document as proof of eligibility, citing its lax scrutiny. Duffy also launched the Freedom Haulers program in July, encouraging veterans to become truckers while purging illegal immigrants from the industry.
Border crossings have dropped from over 144,000 in December to 33,000 in July. But the licensing pipeline Sacramento built didn't appear overnight, and the dead don't come back.
The question now is whether any official in California will be held accountable for handing commercial licenses to illegal immigrants — or whether, as usual, the consequences fall only on the families in the next lane.
