The Trump administration is shutting down hundreds of commercial driver training schools as part of a broader federal crackdown on alleged fraud in the trucking industry.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is removing 110 schools it considers the “greatest offenders” from the federal training registry, forcing them to immediately stop operating. Another 160 schools are being shut down for failing to meet federal requirements, including having adequate space for driving tests and licensed instructors.
The move is the latest step in the administration’s campaign to overhaul the commercial trucking industry, which has increasingly become intertwined with President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
“These individuals are dangerous, and because of the failure from the previous administration, from the Biden administration, they’ve killed hundreds of people,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a news conference in Detroit. “And unfortunately, injured thousands.”
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the 110 schools had collectively certified about 5,000 drivers who were later found to have violated federal English-language requirements. Each of the schools had certified at least 10 drivers who were subsequently cited by law enforcement for English-proficiency violations during roadside inspections, according to Derek Barrs, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
“You have to speak English to operate a commercial vehicle,” Duffy said. “I didn’t create that rule. President Trump didn’t create that rule. That rule has been in place for decades.”
A few deadly crashes involving commercial vehicles driven by undocumented immigrants or non-English speakers — including an immigrant who jackknifed his tractor trailer in Florida in a crash that killed three people a year ago — thrust the concern about training back into the spotlight.
Duffy blamed the Biden administration for allowing trucking schools to certify drivers without adequate federal oversight.
“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,” Duffy said. “What we found is many of those schools don’t actually meet that standard.”
Duffy said that many of the drivers whose licenses were improperly issued were immigrants who were in the country illegally, though the federal enforcement action also targets schools for broader training and certification violations.
The Trump administration has been escalating its scrutiny of trucking schools for months. In February, the Transportation Department announced that more than 550 schools had received notices of proposed removal from the federal registry after investigators found problems including unqualified instructors, fake addresses and inadequate training.
The department also removed nearly 3,000 training providers from the registry in December for failing to meet federal requirements, part of what Duffy described at the time as an effort to crack down on “every link in the illegal trucking chain.”
Duffy said the crackdown wouldn’t impact the need for qualified drivers to meet the country’s shipping needs.
“We’re not gonna have a problem,” Duffy said. “We’re gonna have truck drivers.”
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