Bad news for drivers immigrants who do not have a permanent residence in the United States arrived this Thursday with the announcement of the Department of Vehicles of Californiawhich has decided to revoke the commercial license, known as CDL, of nearly 17,000 of them.
According to a report From the EFE agency, the US Secretary of Transportation, Sean P. Duffy, took advantage of the news to criticize the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, whom he accused of granting business licenses to undocumented people.
The state of California (USA) will revoke some 17,000 commercial licenses for immigrant drivers. https://t.co/mbWKRAxX0t
— EFE News (@EFEnoticias) November 14, 2025
“This is just the tip of the iceberg. My team will continue to pressure California to demonstrate that it has removed all undocumented immigrants from school buses and buses,” Duffy said in a statement.
The publication adds that the state authorities have defended themselves by ensuring that all the CDLs granted were issued to immigrants who had work permits issued by the federal government.
The pulse continues
The pressure from the Administration is aimed at promoting its policies against immigrants in the country and once again strains the tension between the Administration of Republican Donald Trump and the Democratic governor of the state.
The confrontation between the parties over the issue of CDL licenses escalated after a series of fatal accidents in which immigrant drivers were involved, who only had a work permit and have been considered “illegal” by the federal government.
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Recently, Duffy accused California authorities of issuing one of these licenses to Harjinder Singh, a native of India, arrested as alleged responsible for an accident in the state of Florida that caused the death of three people.
The California Department of Vehicles defended itself by saying that Singh had a work permit issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has required California to conduct a full audit of all of its nonresident commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) so that the agency can verify that all “illegally issued” licenses have been revoked and corrected the deficiencies that allowed them to be issued.
Another twist
The US Department of Transportation had announced last October the withholding of more than $40 million destined for California, following an investigation that determined that the state had not met the English language proficiency standards established for commercial drivers by the Trump administration.
At the end of April, the Government began to require that those who work as truck drivers in the United States master the English language in order to guarantee “public safety.”
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The measure was decreed through an executive order signed by President Trump that requires the Department of Transportation to include an English test for these drivers when granting a license.
In August, the State Department took another step in the direction set by the president, by stop the processing of work visas for commercial truck drivers.
The decision set off alarms among immigrants who were already working in the transportation sector in the country, covered by various permits in force at the time, including Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
Freight transportation in the US has faced a structural deficit of drivers for years, estimated at more than 60 thousand vacant positions. That situation had been partially alleviated by the incorporation of immigrants.
Experts then considered that the suspension of visas, far from solving road safety problems, could aggravate the labor shortage in an essential sector for the supply chain.
