DOT Secretary Sean Duffy ratcheted up his feud with California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday by saying he'd caught the state "redhanded," forcing it to revoke 17,000 illegally issued non-domiciled CDLs he said violated federal law.
The latest turn in California's non-domiciled CDL saga comes after the state repeatedly denied breaking any federal rules in issuing more than 60,000 non-domiciled CDLs.
DOT has repeatedly threatened to pull funding from California after the state's refusal to get on board with English language enforcement for drivers and upgrading driver Jashanpreet Singh's intrastate-only non-domiciled CDL after DOT had ordered it not to, six days before his deadly crash on I-10.
"After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed,” Duffy said in a release. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semitrucks and school buses.”
DOT said that notices "have been issued to the 17,000 non-domiciled CDL holders that their license no longer meets federal requirements and will expire in 60 days."
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration also required California "to provide its full audit of all its non-domiciled CDLs so the agency can verify that every illegally issued license has been revoked and that the failures that allowed these licenses to be issued are corrected."
DOT's recent push to purge around 200,000 non-domiciled CDL drivers from commercial work has been paused by court order, but has already produced a spectacular crash between the federal government and California.
At a press conference in September, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy showed a California CDL that expires months after an applicant's legal work authorization in the country.DOT
DOT, in announcing the emergency rulemaking seeking to impose stricter requirements on non-citizens seeking CDLs, singled out California specifically, demanding that the state shut down its non-domiciled CDL program and revoke any wrongly issued CDLs. DOT soon after pulled $40 million in funding for the state's refusal to enforce English language proficiency laws. DOT also threatened to withhold an additional $160 million of highway funds if California didn't take action on non-domiciled CDLs.
[Related: California refuses to revoke 20,000 wrongly issued CDLs in note to DOT]
California responded to DOT's letter on October 26, stating it had complied with all federal regulations, and that DOT and the Department of Homeland Security had explicitly authorized non-domiciled CDL eligibility for non-citizens prior to the recent changes. California did, however, admit that it issued some 20,000 non-domiciled CDLs in error, with the date of the CDLs' expiration going past the date of the applicant's legal stay in the country by months or sometimes even years.
Those 20,000 wrongly issued CDLs only violated California law, however, not federal law, the state wrote. Still, California at that time said it would not revoke those licenses.
It's unclear why now California will revoke 17,000 CDLs, or why the 20,000 has become 17,000. Overdrive reached out to California DMV and did not hear back.
California Governor Newsom's press office responded to DOT's most recent release on Twitter, disputing the facts as Duffy laid them out.
California's response largely reiterates the points it made in its letter to DOT requesting it keep its funding. That letter did not respond to specific claims from DOT about wrongdoing that led to Jashanpreet Singh's CDL getting upgraded to remove its intrastate restriction on October 15, weeks after DOT's emergency rulemaking required states to stop upgrading non-domiciled CDLs.
California would later tell Overdrive upgrades like the one that gave Singh interstate driving privileges happened automatically, and that it's since corrected its processes.
[Related: California explains why it upgraded Jashanpreet Singh's CDL days before fatal I-10 crash]
On social media, Duffy didn't give California the benefit of the doubt.
"Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked," Duffy tweeted. " This is just the beginning. California must revoke every illegally issued CDL or I will pull $160 million in federal funds."
Drivers, do you support DOT's move to ban non-domiciled CDLs for nearly 200,000 non-citizen drivers? If you haven't yet, weigh in via Overdrive's survey below.
