New York is the 8th state found to have improperly issued commercial driver’s licences to immigrants

New York is the eighth state found to routinely issue commercial driver’s licences to immigrants that are valid long after they are no longer legally authorized to be in the country, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday, and he threatened to withhold US$73 million in highway funds unless the system is fixed and any flawed licenses are revoked.

New York was the fourth state run by a Democratic governor called out publicly by Duffy in his effort to make sure truck and bus drivers are qualified to either haul passengers or 80,000 pounds of cargo down the highway.

He previously questioned similar practices in California, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

But letters have gone out to other states as well without fanfare, or comments from Duffy, including Republican-run Texas and South Dakota.

In addition to finding licenses that remained valid longer than they should have, these federal audits have also discovered instances where the states may not have even checked a driver’s immigration status before issuing a licence.

Investigators check a small sample of licenses in each state.

Duffy launched the review this summer, but it became more prominent after a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the US made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people in August. The rules on these licenses the Transportation Department is enforcing have been in place for years.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sent letters to Texas, South Dakota, Colorado, and Washington during the government shutdown in October.

Most of the states that have been the focus of the investigation so far have defended their practices and said they were following the federal rules. But Duffy has said the high percentage of problems in some states, combined with the defensive responses from officials, suggests a systematic problem, and he insisted Friday this effort is about safety — not politics.

“When more than half of the licenses reviewed were issued illegally, it isn’t just a mistake — it is a dereliction of duty by state leadership,” Duffy said about New York on Friday.

Investigators also found that nearly half of the 123 licenses reviewed in Texas were flawed. Some of the other states involved small numbers, but most of the problems were similar. Since Duffy pressed the issue in California, the state has revoked some 21,000 commercial driver’s licenses that were issued improperly.

The Transportation Department has threatened to withhold federal highway funding from these states — including $182 million in Texas and $160 million in California — if they don’t reform their licensing programs and invalidate any flawed licenses.

So far, no state has lost money because they complied or because they have more time to respond. But as part of a separate review, California lost $40 million for failing to enforce English language requirements for truckers that the Trump administration began enforcing this summer.

New York State Department of Motor Vehicles spokesperson Walter McClure said the state is following all the federal rules.

“Secretary Duffy is lying about New York State once again in a desperate attempt to distract from the failing, chaotic administration he represents. Here is the truth: Commercial Drivers Licenses are regulated by the Federal Government, and New York State DMV has, and will continue to, comply with federal rules,” McClure said in a statement.

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