California delays cancellation of thousands of migrant trucker licenses

The California Department of Motor Vehicles said this week that it is delaying the cancellation of thousands of migrant truck driver licenses.

The announcement means approximately 17,000 migrant truck drivers won’t have their commercial licenses revoked on Jan. 5. Instead, they can remain on the roads and will have another two months to re-test and re-apply.

The decision comes amid pressure from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which announced in November 2025 that it would compel California to revoke thousands of what it calls “illegally issued” non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses.

A nationwide audit revealed “systemic policy, procedural, and programming errors in California’s non-domiciled CDL program, which allowed thousands of CDLs to be illegally issued to foreign drivers,” according to the DOT.

A series of fatal crashes in 2025 prompted a closer examination of non-domiciled CDL holders. In October, a collision involving a trucker whose immigration status is in dispute killed three people just outside of Los Angeles.

In August, a truck driver in Florida, not authorized to be in the U.S., made an illegal U-turn and killed three people.

The decision to delay the revocation of licenses comes just days after immigrant rights groups sued the California DMV.

The Sikh Coalition and the Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of California drivers, alleging immigrant truck drivers are being unfairly targeted and licenses are getting cancelled for minor paperwork discrepancies. 

The drivers in the fatal Florida and California crashes were both Sikhs.

An estimated 150,000 Punjabi Sikhs work in the American trucking industry, with the majority based on the West Coast, according to the Los Angeles Times.

On X, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy repeated his threat to withhold $160 million in federal funding if California doesn’t meet the Jan. 5 deadline to revoke licenses. 

“California does NOT have an ‘extension’ to keep breaking the law and putting Americans at risk on the roads,” Duffy wrote, disputing the DMV’s announcement.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to Duffy on X, claiming the transportation department had agreed to a deadline extension over a week ago and calling the situation “federal mismanagement”.

In October, Duffy withheld $40 million in federal funding from California for being the only state not to enforce English language requirements for truckers.

This article was published by The Hill