{"id":40589,"date":"2025-11-21T11:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T11:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/40589\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T11:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T11:28:14","slug":"trump-administration-threatens-to-withhold-75m-from-pennsylvania-over-immigrant-truck-drivers-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/40589\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration threatens to withhold $75M from Pennsylvania over immigrant truck drivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration threatened Thursday to withhold nearly $75 million in funding if Pennsylvania does not immediately revoke what the administration claims are illegally issued commercial driver\u2019s licenses to immigrants.<\/p>\n

The move by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to target Pennsylvania follows similar action against California. Both states are run by Democratic governors who have criticized President Donald Trump\u2019s administration and who are viewed as potential top-shelf contenders to be the party\u2019s 2028 presidential nominee.<\/p>\n

Duffy has made it a priority to scrutinize how the licenses are issued since August, when a tractor-trailer driver not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. That incident thrust the issue into the public\u2019s consciousness.<\/p>\n

In a statement Thursday, DOT spokesperson Danna Almeida said all states were being reviewed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how many people would be affected in Pennsylvania. In any case, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro \u2018s administration said the federal government didn\u2019t identify a single commercial driver\u2019s license issued to someone who wasn\u2019t eligible.<\/p>\n

Still, a letter Thursday from the Republican administration to Shapiro cited an audit that found two out of 150 people whose licenses exceeded their lawful presence in the country.<\/p>\n

In four cases it had reviewed, the federal government said Pennsylvania provided no evidence that it had required noncitizens to provide legitimate proof that they were legally in the country at the time they got the license.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration called on Pennsylvania to stop issuing new, renewed and transferred commercial driver\u2019s licenses and permits, as well as conduct an audit to identify those licenses whose expirations exceed the driver\u2019s lawful stay in the U.S.<\/p>\n

It is also asking the state to void noncompliant licenses and remove those drivers from the road. The administration said approximately 12,400 noncitizen drivers hold an unexpired commercial learner\u2019s permit or commercial driver\u2019s license issued by Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

The governors of California and Pennsylvania \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Gavin Newsom and Shapiro \u00e2\u20ac\u201d are tough critics of Trump, and both have been repeated targets of Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

Shapiro\u2019s administration said the state transportation department ceased issuing commercial driver\u2019s licenses to noncitizens after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration published a regulation in late September that would severely limit which immigrants can get one.<\/p>\n

A federal court has put the rule on hold for now, but Shapiro\u2019s administration said its transportation department still hasn\u2019t resumed issuing what are called \u201cnon-domiciled CDLs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania\u2019s transportation department said Thursday that it follows federal rules for verifying an immigrant applicant\u2019s lawful presence in the country by checking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security\u2019s database.<\/p>\n

But Shapiro this week suggested that DHS was falling short by failing to properly maintain that database, which states use to check an immigrant\u2019s legal status before issuing a driver\u2019s license to a noncitizen.<\/p>\n

His comments came after DHS said it had arrested an Uzbek national with a commercial driver\u2019s license issued by Pennsylvania. The man, who had a work authorization granted in 2024, was wanted in his home country for belonging to a terrorist organization, the department said.<\/p>\n

But Shapiro said the state transportation department checked the federal database over the summer before issuing a CDL to the man, and he was authorized to get one. The state rechecked the database this week, and it still listed him as qualified to get a CDL, Shapiro said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey clearly are not minding the shop, and they\u2019ve gotta get better, because every single state in the country relies on this database when making a determination as to who qualifies for a CDL. We relied on the feds before issuing this one,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n

California, which said it would revoke 17,000 licenses, is the only state the administration has acted against because it was the first one where an audit was completed. The government shutdown delayed reviews in other states, but the Transportation Department is urging all of them to tighten their standards.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. The Trucker Media Group is subscriber of The Associated Press has been granted the license to use this content on TheTrucker.com and The Trucker newspaper in accordance with its Content License Agreement with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration threatened Thursday to withhold nearly $75 million in funding if Pennsylvania does not immediately revoke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[564,28,30,29,24535],"class_list":["post-40589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-featured","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-primary-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}