WASHINGTON (TNND) — Operation Highway Sentinel, launched by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has led to the arrest of over 100 illegal alien truck drivers on California highways.
If you get a driver’s license in Colorado, New York or California, you don’t stay in those states. You actually travel across the country so you endanger every single American,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox & Friends Tuesday.
Federal authorities said the operation was launched earlier in December, following multiple deadly crashes involving commercial trucks driven by unauthorized immigrants who were licensed in California.
Including Harjinder Singh, an Indian national who allegedly killed three people while trying to make an illegal U-turn in Florida over the summer.
We see one of these stories about once a month where people are dying because again, really dumb mistakes being made on the American roadways,” Duffy said.
Those arrested as part of the operation in California include illegal aliens from nearly a dozen different countries. Including India, Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Venezuela. Similar operations also took place in New York and Oklahoma, along with ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ in Indiana, which resulted in over 200 arrests, including 146 truck drivers, 50 of whom had CDLs issued by different states.
Too many families across this country have felt pain and have been victimized and lost loved ones because of these illegal drivers,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in October following the operation.
Earlier in the year, the Trump administration announced new rules regarding commercial truck drivers. Primarily focused on English language proficiency requirements. California was the first state to have federal funding withheld for noncompliance. Over $40 million. But multiple other states have also failed to cooperate or are under scrutiny. Including Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Not to mention Colorado, a state Duffy is threatening to withhold $24 million from, after a federal audit found roughly 22% of CDL’s given to immigrants were done so illegally.
I guarantee you that the federal taxpayer is not going to fund their roads and bridges and their systems when they’re putting illegals on the roads and endangering the lives of the American people,” said Duffy.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis said, “crossed wires” caused the problem and if Duffy had reached out, he would have known the state had “finished the investigation and we are conducting a final review of the findings, with letters likely going out this week to CDL holders whose credentials were improperly issued.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office and the state’s DMV have also countered Duffy’s accusations in several areas. Including the fact that California CDL holders have a fatal crash rate lower than the national average. Plus, the federal government, not the state, determines CDL eligibility.