Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy shut down 270 commercial truck-driving schools Monday for graduating drivers who cannot speak English, a crackdown officials say targets an industry that has cost hundreds of lives.
Duffy announced the action at a press conference in Detroit alongside Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator Derek Barrs, and Andrew Ferguson, vice chairman of the anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance. The Department of Transportation removed 110 schools from the federal Training Provider Registry and ordered them to immediately cease all operations. Another 160 schools were suspended for failing to meet basic training facility standards.
The 110 shuttered schools share a common thread: every one of them graduated at least 10 drivers who were later cited for English-language proficiency violations during roadside inspections by law enforcement. Collectively, those schools trained more than 5,000 enrollees who turned out to be unable to speak English, a federal requirement for operating a commercial vehicle that has been on the books for decades.
Duffy did not hold back at the podium.
"If you're here illegally and you can't speak the language and you're not well-trained, you don't deserve to be in a big rig, driving American roads, endangering American citizens."
Duffy said 239 people have died in crashes caused by non-English-speaking truck drivers since the start of the current term in January 2025. Among those whose lives were upended: Delilah Coleman, a five-year-old who suffered a brain injury in a 2024 California pileup caused by an 18-wheeler. The driver, Partap Singh, was identified as an illegal immigrant from India. Coleman was in attendance at Monday's announcement.
Barrs put names on the worst offenders. Platinum Plus Truck Driving School in California certified 36 drivers who were later cited for English-language proficiency violations. One of those trainees killed someone in Oklahoma. ASC Technical Institute in Texas certified 58 such drivers. One ran a stop sign and killed a local man in a Texas county.
The numbers extend well beyond those two schools. The Washington Examiner reported that nearly 30,000 drivers nationwide have been placed out of service for English-language violations, a figure that captures the full scope of a problem the previous administration allowed to fester.
Duffy placed blame squarely on the prior administration's oversight failures. Under the Biden administration, CDL schools were allowed to self-certify, simply declaring they met federal standards without meaningful verification.
Duffy laid out the gap between the rule and its enforcement:
"The last administration allowed truck driving schools to self-certify to say that they meet all of the federal standards to be a certified truck driving school. What we found is many of those schools don't actually meet that standard."
The 160 suspended schools illustrate how low the bar had fallen. Some claimed a single truck or a small parking lot as their entire training facility, then certified graduates as ready to handle 80,000-pound rigs on public highways. The federal government has oversight of roughly 31,000 CDL training schools across the country, and the Department of Transportation used data analysis to identify the worst violators.
The administration's broader push against immigration fraud has extended across multiple agencies. The anti-fraud task force led by Vice President Vance has widened its enforcement footprint in recent months, and the CDL crackdown fits that pattern.
Homeland Security Secretary Mullin, a former Oklahoma congressman and senator who earned his own CDL at age 21, described the rigorous process he went through, walking around a truck to identify its components, demonstrating he could bleed the air brakes, completing a long road test. The schools now being shut down, he said, did not come close to that standard.
Mullin said "almost every one" of the illegal immigrant drivers involved in deadly and near-fatal incidents received their commercial licenses in sanctuary cities. He singled out California under Governor Gavin Newsom as "by far, the worst" abuser, and noted the consequences do not stay inside state lines.
Mullin told reporters:
"By far, the worst abusers are in California under Gavin Newsom's leadership. It doesn't just affect California. It affects our entire country."
One detail from the DHS investigation stood out. Mullin said his department put 107 trucks out of commission because the CDL holders behind the wheel had licenses that literally read "No Name Given." Drivers operating commercial vehicles on American highways without so much as a name on file.
The administration has also moved aggressively on related fronts, including revoking visas from foreigners who filed asylum claims and pursuing denaturalization cases against convicted criminals.
The school shutdowns follow a late-July DHS operation that busted more than 800 truckers over just three days. Thirty-six of those truckers could not speak English. Mullin described the operation as part of a widening enforcement campaign that has uncovered visa fraud, labor law violations, financial crimes, and drug trafficking, all connected to CDL businesses.
Newsmax reported that states have now cancelled more than 30,000 licenses that were illegally issued to foreign drivers, and more than 28,000 drivers have been placed out of service for English-language proficiency violations since June 2025. Those figures point to a problem far larger than 270 schools.
Mullin also revealed that federal investigators are now targeting employees at state DMV offices suspected of accepting payments, sometimes from cartels, to help illegal immigrants bypass driver's license and CDL requirements. The DHS secretary has simultaneously pushed enforcement on election security issues, signaling the department's willingness to pursue systemic fraud wherever it surfaces.
Mullin did not hold back in assigning responsibility for the body count:
"These individuals are dangerous, and because of the failure from the previous administration, from the Biden administration, they killed hundreds of people and unfortunately injured thousands."
Andrew Ferguson, vice chairman of the Vance-led task force, made clear the enforcement will not stop at revoking registrations. Ferguson said fraudulent CDL schools require criminal prosecution.
Ferguson stated:
"If a school is giving out a CDL fraudulently, you need men with guns and prosecutors to find them, put them in jail, and make sure that they rot in jail."
The scale of the broader crackdown is staggering. The AP reported that more than 550 CDL training schools have now been closed nationwide, with 448 failing to meet basic safety standards, deficiencies that included unqualified instructors and failure to test students' skills. Another 109 schools voluntarily removed themselves from the federal registry when they learned inspections were coming, which tells its own story about what those operators knew they would find.
Todd Spencer, president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, said the industry itself has been undermined by the corner-cutting. Just The News reported Spencer's assessment that some in the industry "chose to cut corners and push undertrained drivers onto the road," devaluing the entire trucking profession in the process. Federal investigators conducted 1,400 sting operations using 300 investigators across all 50 states.
Duffy pushed back on concerns that pulling unqualified drivers off the road might create a trucker shortage. His answer was blunt: "We're not gonna have a problem. We're gonna have truck drivers." The administration's position is that well-trained, English-speaking drivers, including legal immigrants, will fill the seats that sham schools filled with unqualified operators.
The DOJ's parallel crackdown on citizenship fraud reflects the same enforcement philosophy now driving the CDL cleanup: find the fraud, name the people responsible, and shut the pipeline down.
For decades, a federal rule required commercial drivers to speak English. The Biden administration let that rule collect dust while sham schools stamped out licenses for people who could not read a road sign. Now 239 families are paying the price. Enforcing the law is not a crackdown, it is the bare minimum.