Immigrant truckers to lose driver’s licenses

What happened

The roughly 200,000 immigrant truck drivers in the U.S. began losing their commercial driver’s licenses Monday as a new Trump administration rule took effect. The Transportation Department rule bars asylum seekers, refugees and DACA recipients from obtaining a commercial license, though those who already have a license can continue using it until it expires.

Who said what

The new rule “will weigh on the beleaguered trucking industry,” already “plagued by high turnover rates” amid “long hours, low pay, dangerous road conditions and extended periods away from home,” The Washington Post said. Immigrants, who currently hold about 5% of commercial driver’s licenses, are “critical to transporting goods across America at a time when energy costs are surging due to the war in Iran.”

America has “allowed dangerous foreign drivers to abuse our truck licensing systems — wreaking havoc on our roadways” — for “far too long,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement announcing the rule last month. “The Trump administration has conceded that there’s no empirical relationship between a person’s nation of domicile and safety outcomes,” said Wendy Liu, a lawyer at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which is suing to block the rule. Immigrants have to pass the same tests after attending the same driving schools as nonimmigrants.

What next?

The new rule is part of President Donald Trump’s “widening campaign against immigrant truck drivers following several high-profile accidents last summer,” the Post said. In his State of the Union speech, Trump urged Congress to codify in law his restrictions on immigrant truckers, though no votes have been scheduled. The trucking industry warned that such bans would “ripple through the supply chain,” KABC Los Angeles said, potentially “costing Americans more at the store.”