{"id":158025,"date":"2026-01-31T13:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T13:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/158025\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T13:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T13:52:07","slug":"in-dispute-over-ca-trucking-licenses-one-group-has-the-most-to-lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/158025\/","title":{"rendered":"In dispute over CA trucking licenses, one group has the most to lose"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Gagandeep Singh<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\""A\"
\n\t\t\t\tAn employee works on a semi-truck at the Gillson Trucking Inc. facility in Stockton on Jan. 16, 2026. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

Diesel engines once roared to life each morning at Bikramjeet Singh Gill\u2019s truck depot in Stockton as drivers conducted their pre-trip inspections before heading out to destinations across the United States. Now, dozens of his trucks stand idle, accumulating dust and debt.<\/p>\n

Around 35 of Gill\u2019s immigrant drivers were notified since last fall that the Department of Motor Vehicles was canceling their commercial driver\u2019s licenses. And, they were gone.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have lost nearly $2 million in the last four months while paying $200,000 monthly to the bank and insurers for 35 parked trucks. The banks don\u2019t wait,” Gill said, who runs Gillson Trucking Inc.<\/p>\n

His employees and his trucks are tied up in one of the flash points of the Trump administration<\/a>\u2019s broad crackdown on all kinds of immigration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s travails began in September when the Trump administration released an audit that questioned the legitimacy of about 17,000 California commercial drivers licenses held by immigrants, finding licenses with expiration dates that exceeded the drivers\u2019 authorization to live and work in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California followed up by notifying those drivers that their licenses would be canceled. The Trump administration also published new regulations in September targeting immigrant drivers, which will ultimately rescind licenses from as many as 61,000 truck drivers<\/a> in the coming years.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an acute issue for California\u2019s Sikh community. About 35% of the state\u2019s commercial drivers are believed to be Sikh \u2014 members of a religious minority who hail from India \u2014 according to an industry advocacy group that represents them. They\u2019re well established in California\u2019s Central Valley, the agricultural region stretching from Redding to Bakersfield.<\/p>\n

\""A\"<\/p>\n

\""Two\"
\nFirst: Bikramjit Singh Gill, head of operations at Gillson Trucking Inc., sits in the driver’s seat of a semi-truck at the company\u2019s lot. Last: Rows of semi-trucks and trailers at the Gillson Trucking Inc. facility in Stockton on Jan. 16, 2026. Photos by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters<\/p>\n

Many Sikh Californians went into debt to immigrate to the United States and truck driving became a vital source of income for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Sikh Coalition, an American Sikh advocacy group, filed a lawsuit with Asian Law Caucus in Alameda Superior Court challenging California\u2019s decision to cancel non-domicile commercial driving licenses<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Sikh coalition frames this as a civil rights issue targeting \u201cspecific groups of immigrant truck drivers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen someone loses their CDL, they lose their livelihood,\u201d said Munmeeth Kaur, the Sikh Coalition\u2019s legal director. \u201cHere, the DMV is intending to cancel the livelihoods of 20,000 people en masse without providing them with any opportunity to be heard, to challenge the decision, and\/or to provide evidence on how DMV can correct the error and reissue their license. This is an egregious due process violation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s focus on immigrant drivers intensified after two fatal crashes involving Sikh truck drivers caught national attention<\/a>. In August, a Sikh trucker, Harjinder Singh, made an illegal U-turn on a highway, killing three people in Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Ontario east of Los Angeles another Sikh driver, Jashanpreet Singh, 21, of Yuba City, crashed into vehicles stopped on Interstate 10 and killed three people on Oct. 21.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is threatening to withhold transportation funding from the state over what the administration describes as a delay in the license cancellations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a day for Gavin Newsom and California. 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,\u201d said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, thousands of drivers are struggling to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery other driver holding a non-domiciled license now can\u2019t secure work. Many companies won’t hire them, and brokers and shippers won\u2019t load trucks with the non-domiciles license holders,\u201d said Raman Dhillon, chief executive officer of North America Punjabi Trucking Association.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Totally devastated’<\/p>\n

On a recent Friday afternoon, Gill sat in his office wearing his green turban and jacket, answering phone calls, and juggling emails. Certificates of excellence hung on his office walls \u2014 proof of his hard work. He and Harsimran Singh worked 18-hours days to build the company and achieve their immigrant dream after leaving Punjab, a state in north India.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gill started his company with a single truck in 2010. Now he and Singh own nearly 200. Like many trucking companies in California, Gillson relied on a workforce that included immigrant drivers who had legally issued commercial drivers licenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\""A\"Tejinder Singh Mehta, owner of Intrade Industries Inc., stands near a row of trucks at his company\u2019s facility in Fresno on Jan. 16, 2026. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a chain,\u201d he said in an office decorated with U.S. and California flags \u201cIt\u2019s not only the driver. You have dispatchers, brokers, farm workers producing the product, local drivers and then local drivers carrying the freight from farms to distribution yards. For each driver, 10 people will be affected. It’s not 17,000 \u2014 approximately 200,000 people will be affected in the Central Valley alone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fears of racial profiling<\/p>\n

About 750,000 Sikhs live in the U.S., and about 150,000 work in the trucking industry, mostly as drivers. The deadly crashes late last summer and their aftermath have sent shivers through the Sikh trucking community that have not only economic consequences but psychological ones, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Travellers on State Route 99, the artery running through California\u2019s Central Valley, in recent years spotted images of Sikh iconography along the road and on trucks, such as images of warriors Baba Deep Singh and singers like Sidhu Moosewala<\/a>, as well as religious symbols. Now those markers of identity have largely been removed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\""Two\"Semi-trucks traveling down Highway 99 in Fresno on Feb. 25, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters\/CatchLight Local<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery driver displays pictures or signs representing what inspires him,\u201d Gill said. \u201cNow they removed them. The drivers say people record videos of their trucks and post them on social media or honk at them aggressively.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dhillon cites another reason related to shippers. \u201cWe do ask people not to display those things, because many shippers won’t load your truck when they see these images on windows, or trailers,\u201d Dhillon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He noted that instead of law enforcement, drivers report harassment from the general public. \u201cRegular people do harass the people who wear turbans,\u201d Dhillon said. \u201cBut I will say that the drivers need to present themselves as professional drivers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Naindeep Singh, executive director of the Jakara Movement, a California-based Sikh advocacy organization, believes drivers crossing state lines are becoming cautious about displaying conspicuous stickers, which might lead to racial profiling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have been sharing with us frequently, though informally, very scared about using their names, sharing about microaggression cases of racism that they were starting to feel or sense as they were carrying loads across the country,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\""A\"Naindeep Singh, executive director of Jakara Movement, stands next to the front entrance of the Jakara Movement Paaras Youth Center in Fresno on Jan. 16, 2026. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters<\/p>\n

Lives in limbo<\/p>\n

The immigrant drivers who received cancellation notices and those affected by ICE enforcement operations have begun shifting to gig economy jobs with Uber, Lyft and DoorDash in the Central Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gill said that these drivers own homes and support families. How will they maintain their households when their income suddenly plummets from $8,000 monthly to whatever they can earn through gig work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDrivers have families, and most of them were established here,\u201d Mehta said. \u201cMany of them bought houses, so 17,000 houses will be affected \u2014 everything connected to those homes, the entire economic ecosystem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mehta wants the state to extend licenses by six months \u2014 time that would let the companies adjust to the new rules. \u201cIf we can get that time, I think we should be good,\u201d Mehta said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dhillon asked California DMV to acknowledge what he described as its errors \u2014 issuing licenses with expiration beyond drivers authorized presence\u00a0 \u2014 and correct them. \u201cThey should figure out a way to keep these drivers until their work authorization expires,\u201d Dhillon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mehta is a Republican who voted for Trump. So did many of his colleagues in the industry. Mehta still likes Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe should broaden his vision and understand things more deeply. He should not be at his whims and fancies. We want somebody who understands things in detail and really cares for the economy and industry,\u201d Mehta added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gagandeep Singh, CalMatters An employee works on a semi-truck at the Gillson Trucking Inc. facility in Stockton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,536,112,14,483,1967],"class_list":{"0":"post-158025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-fresno","13":"tag-immigration","14":"tag-stockton","15":"tag-transportation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}