Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced new efforts to combat alleged fraud in the trucking industry and the closure of more than 200 truck-driving schools.
The announcement is part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to crack down on fraud.
The two officials criticized the Biden administration for issuing illegal driver’s licenses to immigrants. They argued that the long-standing English proficiency requirement to drive in the U.S. is being abused.
“I want to talk about how we got here,” Duffy began. “The administration let millions of illegals into the country. Now, when those illegals came in, oftentimes our data on those individual started on their points of entry. We couldn’t go back and look at their ... countries of origin. We couldn’t see their criminal records. We can’t see their driving records.”
“On top of that, the last administration allowed truck driving schools to self-certify, to say that they meet all of the federal standards to be a certified truck driving school. And what we found is many of those schools don’t actually meet that standard,” he continued.
Duffy said there were many examples of an immigrant in the country illegally driving a semitruck and injuring or killing other people.
He noted that it’s been a long-standing rule that commercial truck drivers have been required to speak English and there are driving schools that allow non-English speakers to earn their ability to drive commercially.
The administration was taking measures Monday to close many of those driving schools. They were joined in Detroit for the announcement by Marcus Coleman and his daughter Dalilah, who was critically injured in a 2024 crash caused by an immigrant living in the country illegally who was behind the wheel.
The Transportation Department issued the emergency closure of 110 commercial driver’s license schools that have been associated with more than 5,000 drivers who failed English proficiency tests.
They also launched a nationwide audit of third-party commercial driver’s license school testers and different states’ oversight of those testers, shutting down another 160 schools for violations.
“What we found through our data analysis is that many of the certified state testers actually aren’t adequately testing the potential drivers that they’re going to license,” Duffy said, noting that it varies by state.
The announcement comes as Vice President JD Vance leads an anti-fraud task force, directing top administration officials to root out fraud in various U.S. institutions like Medicaid.
Duffy said they were cracking down on the fraud and “going to bring safety back to American roadways.”
“We want well-skilled, well-trained truck drivers on American roads. And if you are not well skilled, you’re not well trained, and you’re not well licensed, you have no place driving an 18-wheeler, 80,000 pounds on American roadways, endangering the safety of American citizens,” he said.
Mullin noted that targeting the commercial driver’s license schools has been a key part of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts and said ICE has found more than 100 people who have been given their commercial driver’s license and listed “No name given.”
“These individuals are dangerous, and because of the failure from the previous administration, from the Biden administration, they’ve killed hundreds of people. And unfortunately, injured thousands,” Mullin said.
According to U.S. DOT data, in 2024, the most recent year numbers are available, 4,602 people were killed in accidents involving trucks and 74,078 people were injured.