California loses $160M for delaying revocation of 17,000 commercial
driver’s licenses for immigrants
[January 08, 2026] By
JOSH FUNK
California will lose $160 million for delaying the revocations of 17,000
commercial driver’s licenses for immigrants, federal transportation
officials announced Wednesday.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy already withheld $40 million in
federal funding because he said California isn’t enforcing English
proficiency requirements for truckers.
The state notified these drivers in the fall that they would lose their
licenses after a federal audit found problems that included licenses for
truckers and bus drivers that remained valid long after an immigrant’s
visa expired. Some licenses were also given to citizens of Mexico and
Canada who don't qualify. More than one-quarter of the small sample of
California licenses that investigators reviewed were unlawful.
But then last week California said it would delay those revocations
until March after immigrant groups sued the state because of concerns
that some groups were being unfairly targeted. Duffy said the state was
supposed to revoke those licenses by Monday.
Duffy is pressuring California and other states to make sure immigrants
who are in the country illegally aren’t granted the licenses.
“Our demands were simple: follow the rules, revoke the unlawfully-issued
licenses to dangerous foreign drivers, and fix the system so this never
happens again,” Duffy said in a statement. “(Gov.) Gavin Newsom has
failed to do so — putting the needs of illegal immigrants over the
safety of the American people.”
California DMV spokesperson Eva Spiegel said the state complies with all
regulations and had positive conversations with Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration officials about delaying the revocations to allow
time for the federal agency to complete its review if the state's
commercial driver's license program.
“We strongly disagree with the federal government’s decision to withhold
vital transportation funding from California — their action jeopardizes
public safety because these funds are critical for maintaining and
improving the roadways we all rely on every day,” Spiegel said.
But in the official letter the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration sent Wednesday, federal officials said they never agreed
to the delay after the state suggested it and still expected the 17,000
licenses to be revoked by this week.
Enforcement ramped up after fatal crashes
The federal government began cracking down during the summer. The issue
became prominent after a truck driver who was not authorized to be in
the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that
killed three people in August.
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 Duffy previously threatened to
withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from California,
Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New York, Texas, South Dakota, Colorado,
and Washington after audits found significant problems under the
existing rules, including commercial licenses being valid long after
an immigrant truck driver’s work permit expired. He had dropped the
threat to withhold nearly $160 million from California after the
state said it would revoke the licenses.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek
Barrs said California failed to live up to the promise it made in
November to revoke all the flawed licenses by Jan. 5. The agency
said the state also unilaterally decide to delay until March the
cancellations of roughly 4,700 additional unlawful licenses that
were discovered after the initial ones were found.
“We will not accept a corrective plan that knowingly leaves
thousands of drivers holding noncompliant licenses behind the wheel
of 80,000-pound trucks in open defiance of federal safety
regulations,” Barrs said.
Industry praises the enforcement
Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified
drivers who shouldn’t have licenses or can’t speak English off the
road. They also applauded the Transportation Department’s moves to
go after questionable commercial driver’s license schools.
“For too long, loopholes in this program have allowed unqualified
drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the
motoring public at risk,” said Todd Spencer, president of the Owner
Operator Independent Drivers Association.
The spotlight has been on Sikh truckers because the driver in the
Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash in California in
October are both Sikhs. So the Sikh Coalition, a national group
defending the civil rights of Sikhs, and the San Francisco-based
Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the
California drivers. They said immigrant truck drivers were being
unfairly targeted.
Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these
non-domiciled licenses immigrants can receive only represent about
5% of all commercial driver’s licenses or about 200,000 drivers. The
Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions that would
severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court
put the new rules on hold.
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