ICE officers are now checking commercial truckers at weigh stations to verify work status and English proficiency, officials say.Show Caption
The Trump administration has deployed immigration agents to trucker safety and weight inspection stations around the country, citing a series of fatal crashes involving improperly licensed truck drivers.Federal officials say states have already revoked more than 28,000 commercial driver's licenses issued to people who lacked legal permission to live and work in the country. Now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are helping determine whether truckers have work or residency permission, and whether they meet longstanding regulations requiring English language proficiency.The Trump administration cited multiple fatal crashes involving improperly licensed drivers as justification for the new effort. On July 1, a Pennsylvania state trooper was killed by a truck driven by Haitian man who federal officials said was working illegally. Trump also featured a young truck crash victim, Dalilah Coleman, at his Feb. 24 State of the Union address, saying she was hit by an improperly licensed driver."This administration is determined to rid our trucking industry of unvetted and unqualified foreign drivers who fail to abide by the rules of our roads," federal Department of Transportation spokeswoman Danna Almeida told USA TODAY. "We will use every tool at our disposal to safeguard our roads and ensure the safety of American families and truckers."Some migrant rights groups say tough trucker enforcement will drive up costs for consumers, if thousands of drivers are forced off the roads, and that the stricter enforcement is fraught with the risk of racial profiling.Department of Homeland Security officials cited operational security in declining to release additional details about where ICE agents are working alongside state truck inspectors, or how many have been assigned.Border czar Tom Homan said Democrat-run states continue to refuse access to driver licensing data, which they control. Some states issue driver's licenses to people who lack legal permission to live in the United States, including commercial licenses."There's just a lot of these people to find, but we're out there every day looking for them," Homan said July 7 on Fox News. "We've got a lot of people we're looking for. In some states, we're actually working weigh stations with the troopers, trying to get these people as they're coming through."Homan's comments came a week after Pennsylvania Trooper Michael Pahira was hit by a truck driven by Michael Bon. Bon entered the United States in 2024 and requested but never received Temporary Protected Status as a Haitian refugee, DHS said. Nevertheless, Bon got a commercial driver's license in Massachusetts, federal officials said. Pahira's funeral was July 8.Bon faces vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter charges in Pennsylvania. Pahira's death followed other high-profile fatal crashes involving what are commonly known as "non-domiciled" truckers, who got commercial licenses even though they lacked permission to work in the United States.On July 5, a University of Massachusetts student died after a trucker rammed into the back of his car on I-71 in Ohio; DOT officials said the trucker couldn't speak or read English, and troopers had to use Google Translate to communicate with him.And last August, California-licensed trucker Harjinder Singh was accused of causing a fatal crash in Florida after pulling an illegal U-turn, colliding with a minivan. He then failed a roadside English proficiency test, federal officials said in a social media post, calling him an "illegal immigrant" who should not have been licensed.Federal officials have been targeting truckers who got licenses from states with weak oversight, particularly when it comes to speaking and reading English. The Obama administration in 2016 suspended enforcement of the longstanding English proficiency rule, but Trump officials last summer reversed that decision.
