Nearly 200,000 US truck drivers are at risk of losing their commercial driver’s licenses after a new federal rule took effect in March, leaving tens of thousands of immigrant drivers stuck in limbo while court challenges move through federal review. The rule narrows who can get or renew a commercial license, and for many foreign-born drivers it has already become the difference between staying on the road and being forced off it.
Sarabjeet Singh has spent the past 12 years driving in central California, but last month he was turned away when he tried to renew an expired license. For Singh and others like him, the new rule does not arrive as an abstract policy fight. It lands as a work stoppage, a lost paycheck and, for families built around trucking, a sudden halt to the only trade they know.
The policy restricts licenses to immigrants with specific employment authorization statuses. Asylum seekers, refugees and people with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status are disqualified. That has put tens of thousands of drivers in a legal and bureaucratic trap as lawsuits challenging the rule remain under review. The rule does not affect every immigrant truck driver, but it reaches deep enough into the labor force to shake carriers, households and state licensing systems at the same time.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has defended the crackdown by saying licenses were being issued to dangerous foreign drivers, often illegally. He called the policy a direct threat to every family on the road and said he would not stand for it, citing five fatal accidents involving immigrant truck drivers. But those five crashes accounted for 0.31% of all large-truck fatal accidents in the United States in the first half of 2025, and a fifth of truck drivers involved in fatal accidents were driving without a commercial license. About 5,200 large trucks were involved in fatal accidents in 2024, down 3% from the year before.
The numbers have not quieted the people living with the fallout. Kavita Patel said the loss of her husband’s license had been devastating for their family, describing the strain as financial, mental, emotional and physical. “People think you can just find another job, but your entire skill set [and] experience has been built around driving this big rig,” she said. “It’s kind of a fear and helplessness that comes from waking up one day and realizing, ‘Oh, guess what, your career that you built is suddenly all gone in one night.’”
The administration’s broader approach has been tightening for months. Last August, the State Department abruptly announced it would stop issuing work visas for commercial truck drivers, and Marco Rubio said the growing number of immigrant truck drivers was posing a safety threat and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers. Yet critics say the government has offered no data showing that foreign CDL holders pose a specific safety threat. The coming fight is now in court, and for drivers like Singh, the answer to whether they can keep working may arrive only after their licenses have already expired.
That uncertainty has made the rule more than a safety debate. It has become a test of who gets to keep working in an industry already strained by labor shortages, and whether the government can remap a profession by licensing rule before judges decide whether the policy can stand.
