Federal officials on Monday shut down more than 270 driving schools in a sweeping crackdown on commercial driver’s license fraud, saying the action was aimed at schools that were not meeting basic rules for training truck drivers. The move, announced in Detroit by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, was described as a historic enforcement step.
Duffy tied the effort to what he called years of failure under President Joe Biden, saying tens of thousands of illegal drivers' licenses were issued during that period and that many illegal immigrants were granted commercial licenses even though some could not speak English. The shutdowns hit 110 schools officials labeled the greatest offenders and 160 more that lacked proper space for driving tests or had unlicensed instructors.
The scale of the sweep matters because it reaches beyond isolated bad actors. Duffy said investigators went into 400 driver training schools and found that 40% did not meet the rules and requirements of the regulations, a rate that suggests the problem was not confined to one region or one operator. He did not identify the schools by name, but the administration’s math points to a broad cleanup across the industry rather than a narrow disciplinary action.
Barrs gave the shutdowns their sharpest edge. He said each of the 110 greatest offenders had passed at least 10 drivers who were later cited for English-language proficiency during roadside inspections by law enforcement. He added, “It’s unacceptable. When you see people die on the road you don’t forget that, and it starts right here with what I’m talking about,” linking the licensing failures directly to safety.
That argument, however, does not fully match the way the schools were split. The administration said 160 of the closures were for space or instructor problems rather than direct license fraud, which means the crackdown bundled together fraud cases and regulatory violations under one headline. In other words, the federal response was broader than the charge that triggered it.
Mullin added another layer to the case, saying Immigration and Customs Enforcement found over 100 people who had been granted CDLs and whose licenses said “No name given.” That finding sharpened the administration’s claim that the system had been abused, while also leaving open the central question the public still cannot answer: which schools were singled out, and what evidence was used to call the 110 the greatest offenders? For now, the federal government has answered with shutdowns, but not with a public list.
