California Has Issued Thousands Of Illegal Trucking Licenses To Foreigners

California has illegally issued thousands of commercial trucking licenses to foreign-born applicants, according to the Department of Transportation.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Wednesday that California has admitted that it issued 17,000 non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses to “dangerous foreign drivers,” according to a Transportation Department press release.

“After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed. Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked,” said Duffy in a statement. “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.”

All holders of illegal CDLs from California have received notices that their licenses will expire in 60 days, according to the Transportation Department. Duffy’s department will also monitor and review California’s audit of its CDL system to “verify that every illegally issued license has been revoked and that the failures that allowed these licenses to be issued are corrected.”

Duffy moved to crack down on illegal CDLs after an Indian national made an illegal U-turn in Florida, causing a wreck that killed three Americans. Authorities arrested 28-year-old Harjinder Singh in August over the crash. Singh is in the United States illegally and obtained his trucking permit from California.

Florida responded to the crash last month by filing a lawsuit against California for illegally issuing Singh’s CDL.

“Here in Florida, we can do everything right, we can back the blue, we can enforce the law, we can combat illegal immigration, but we still suffer when Gavin Newsom and liberals on the West Coast allow these illegals in, encourage them, enable them to get these driver’s licenses and then they cross the country and ultimately take lives,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said at the time.

Thousands of illegal CDLs have been issued in the United States, allowing thousands of illegal commercial trucking drivers to carry cargo across the country. The problem has been fueled by states that do not follow federal rules for issuing commercial licenses, such as allowing driver’s tests to be conducted in a language other than English.