The department said that more than half of the 200 licenses reviewed during the audit had significant problems such as remaining valid long after an immigrant was authorized to be in the country. So the state was ordered to review all of this type of licenses and revoke illegal ones.<\/p>\n
The federal government has reviewed records<\/a> related to these non-domiciled CDLs in every state since Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put a spotlight on this issue after an August crash in Florida<\/a> that killed three people. Most states have either complied or are in negotiations with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, but California has lost<\/a> $200 million. Several other states \u2014 including Pennsylvania<\/a>, Minnesota and North Carolina<\/a> \u2014 have been warned they are at risk of losing some funding.<\/p>\n \u201cI promised the American people I would hold any state leader accountable for failing to keep them safe from unvetted, unqualified foreign drivers. I\u2019m delivering on that promise today,\u201d Duffy said.<\/p>\n Duffy has said that immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers nationwide, but these non-domiciled licenses immigrants can receive only represent about 5% of all commercial driver\u2019s licenses or about 200,000 drivers. New York issued 32,606 of them.<\/p>\n New York officials have defended their licensing practices and said they are complying with federal law and that audits done during the first Trump administration supported that. This action related to the licenses for immigrants is just the latest in a series of battles between the federal government and officials in New York and New Jersey over transportation funding. Duffy put a hold<\/a> on $18 billion in funding for a subway extension and tunnel beneath the Hudson River in August. He has also threatened to pull federal funding from New York if it does not abandon a congestion pricing fee<\/a> in New York City and if crime on the subway system<\/a> is not addressed.<\/p>\n Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s spokesman Sean Butler said the action related to commercial driver\u2019s licenses seems to be part of broad effort to attack blue states.<\/p>\n \u201cThis continues a yearlong pattern of Secretary Duffy threatening to withhold money that keeps our roads, subways, and other infrastructure safe for New Yorkers. We will fight back, and once again we will win,\u201d Butler said.<\/p>\n Trucking industry groups have praised the Transportation Department\u2019s efforts to get unqualified drivers off the road, crack down on questionable trucking schools<\/a> and go after trucking companies<\/a> that violate the rules and then just change their names and keep operating. The industry said that too often unqualified drivers who shouldn\u2019t have licenses or can\u2019t speak English<\/a> have been allowed to get behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound (about 39,916 kilograms) truck.<\/p>\n But immigrant groups say that some drivers are now being unfairly targeted.<\/a> The spotlight has been on Sikh truckers because the driver in the Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash<\/a> in California in October are both Sikhs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By JOSH FUNK, AP Transportation Writer New York will lose more than $73.5 million in federal money because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[79419,35929,5459,4739,3932,79420,9,24,55,54,56,3736,65157],"class_list":{"0":"post-200020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-cdls","9":"tag-commercial-drivers-licenses","10":"tag-department-of-transportation","11":"tag-federal-funding","12":"tag-gov-kathy-hochul","13":"tag-immigrant-licenses","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-city-news","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-sean-duffy","20":"tag-trucking-industry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Department](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776379454_922_LaGuardia_Crash_48138.jpg\")
Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy speaks during a news conference at LaGuardia Airport, Monday, March 23, 2026, after an Air Canada jet collided the night before with a Port Authority firetruck shortly after landing in New York. (AP Photo\/Seth Wenig)<\/p>\n