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The federal government is no longer threatening to withhold highway money from North Carolina over its handling of commercial driver’s licenses issued to people who are not citizens of the United States.
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The N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles revamped how it issues so-called non-domiciled CDLs to ensure it meets federal requirements. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration told the DMV this summer that it could resume issuing non-domiciled CDLs to migrants who are in the country legally, though changes in federal rules could make those licenses rare in the future, state officials say.
In January, the Trump administration threatened to withhold $49 million in highway funding from North Carolina because it said the state wasn’t following federal policies toward non-citizen truck drivers. The FMCSA said it found that of the 50 North Carolina non-domiciled CDLs it examined 27 had been granted illegally. The most common violation by the state was to issue a commercial license that would not expire until after the driver was legally allowed to remain in the country.
The DMV responded by reviewing all 3,184 of its non-domiciled CDLs to determine which ones met federal requirements. The DMV says 1,147 or 36% of them were found to violate federal policy and were either canceled or downgraded to a Class C license, which can’t be used to drive a truck or other commercial vehicle.
Another 906 non-domiciled CDLs had either expired or the driver had moved to another state.
The DMV found that 1,131, or nearly 36%, complied with federal rules.
“Our job is to follow the federal regulations, and ensure we do so in a proper and accountable way, and we’ve shown that now through this process,” DMV commissioner Paul Tine said in an interview. “This was a problem, and once it was identified, we fixed it.”
In the meantime, the FMCSA issued new rules last spring that greatly reduce the number of noncitizens eligible for commercial driver’s licenses. Rather than simply be in the country legally, a migrant must now hold certain work visas to qualify for a CDL. A coalition of unions and interest groups has sued to try to stop the new rules, and that case is pending.
The new requirements are not retroactive and apply only as licenses are issued or come up for renewal. But Tine said the agency found that only a small fraction of current license holders would be eligible under the new rules.
“Of all the people who got licenses from us in the last two years, we wanted to know how many would have gotten them under the new rules,” Tine said. “And it was 22.”
Non-citizen truck drivers have been a special focus of the Trump administration; the North Carolina audit of non-domiciled CDLs was one of several state reviews by the U.S. Department of Transportation last year. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the crackdown and tighter requirements were necessary because “unsafe foreign drivers” posed a “direct threat to the safety of every family on the road.”
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“North Carolina’s failure to follow the rules isn’t just shameful — it’s dangerous,” Duffy said in a statement when he threatened to withhold highway money last winter. “I’m calling on state leadership to immediately remove these dangerous drivers from our roads and clean up their system.”
Critics of the USDOT policy say the government has failed to show that non-domiciled CDL drivers are any more dangerous than others. A lawsuit filed by Public Citizen seeking to block to new rules says the FMCSA highlighted 17 fatal crashes involving non-domiciled CDL holders last year but didn’t provide any data about thousands of other fatal crashes involving large trucks.
“FMCSA’s approach — starting with its conclusion (that the people ineligible under the Rule are less safe) and then cherry-picking examples to support it — is not reasoned decisionmaking,” the lawsuit says.
As it is now, North Carolina’s non-domiciled CDLs account for a tiny fraction of the 325,000 commercial driver’s licenses in the state, according to the DMV. The new regulations would reduce that number to a relative handful.
Nationwide, there are about 200,000 non-citizen CDL holders, and the tighter requirements announced this year could disqualify about 194,000 of them, according to FMCSA.
The trucking industry largely supports the crackdown on immigrant drivers. This summer, the Trucking Association Executives Council published a report celebrating government efforts to “crack down on bad actors in trucking,” including poorly run CDL driving schools and the “97% of the existing non-domiciled CDL holders” who will become ineligible in coming years.
The N.C. Trucking Association thinks efforts to “strengthen the integrity of the CDL system” will benefit everyone, said Ben Greenberg, president and CEO.
“We appreciate regulators working collaboratively to identify and close compliance gaps, because maintaining public confidence in the licensing process benefits everyone who shares the road,” Greenberg said in a statement. “A strong pipeline of professional drivers begins with a system that is trusted, consistent and focused on safety.”
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