By JOSH FUNK
New York is the eighth state found to routinely issue commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants that are valid long after they are no longer legally authorized to be in the country, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday, and he threatened to withhold $73 million in highway funds unless the system is fixed and any flawed licenses are revoked.
New York was the fourth state run by a Democratic governor called out publicly by Duffy in his effort to make sure truck and bus drivers are qualified to either haul passengers or 80,000 pounds of cargo down the highway. He previously questioned similar practices in California, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.
But letters have gone out to other states as well without fanfare, or comments from Duffy, including Republican-run Texas and South Dakota.
In addition to finding licenses that remained valid longer than they should have, these federal audits have also discovered instances where the states may not have even checked a driver’s immigration status before issuing a license. Investigators check a small sample of licenses in each state.
Duffy launched the review this summer, but it became more 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. The rules on these licenses the Transportation Department is enforcing have been in place for years.
The AP discovered letters online Friday that were sent to Texas, South Dakota, Colorado, and Washington in October.
Most of the states that have been the focus of the investigation so far have defended their practices and said they were following the federal rules. But Duffy has said the high percentage of problems in some states, combined with the defensive responses from officials, suggests a systematic problem, and he insisted Friday this effort is about safety — not politics.
“When more than half of the licenses reviewed were issued illegally, it isn’t just a mistake — it is a dereliction of duty by state leadership,” Duffy said about New York on Friday.
Investigators also found that nearly half of the 123 licenses reviewed in Texas were flawed. Some of the other states involved small numbers, but most of the problems were similar. Since Duffy pressed the issue in California, the state has revoked some 21,000 commercial driver’s licenses that were issued improperly.
The Transportation Department has threatened to withhold federal highway funding from these states — including $182 million in Texas and $160 million in California — if they don’t reform their licensing programs and invalidate any flawed licenses.
So far, no state has lost money because they complied or because they have more time to respond. But as part of a separate review, California lost $40 million for failing to enforce English language requirements for truckers that the Trump administration began enforcing this summer.
States defend their licensing practices
New York State Department of Motor Vehicles spokesperson Walter McClure said the state is following all the federal rules.
“Secretary Duffy is lying about New York State once again in a desperate attempt to distract from the failing, chaotic administration he represents. Here is the truth: Commercial Drivers Licenses are regulated by the Federal Government, and New York State DMV has, and will continue to, comply with federal rules,” McClure said in a statement.
Duffy has previously threatened to pull federal funding from New York if the state did not abandon its plan to charge drivers a congestion pricing fee in New York City and if crime on the subway system was not addressed. The Transportation Department also put $18 billion of funding on hold for two major infrastructure projects in New York, including a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey, because of concerns about whether the spending was based on diversity, equity and inclusion principles.
A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that “public safety is the Governor’s top priority, and we must ensure that truckers can navigate Texas roadways safely and efficiently. To support this mission, Governor Abbott directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to strictly enforce English language proficiency requirements and to stop issuing intrastate commercial driver’s licenses to drivers who do not meet those standards.”
Most of the other states have said they are working to address the concerns the Transportation Department raised.
Previous efforts to restrict immigrant truck drivers
Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses 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.
Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers and drivers who can’t speak English off the road along with the Transportation Department’s actions last week to go after questionable commercial driver’s license schools. But immigrant advocacy groups have raised concerns these actions have led to harassment of immigrant drivers and prompted some of them to abandon the profession.
“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, who is president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association.
Associated Press writers Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, and Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, New Jersey, all contributed to this report.