Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy released a shocking report on Thursday evening accusing California of breaking federal law by providing a driver’s license to a foreign asylum seeker who crashed his semi-trucker earlier this week, leaving three people dead.
In the report, Duffy alleges that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration issued the license while ignoring a federal order to stop noncompliant licenses and revoke improperly issued credentials. Duffy directly blamed the loss of “three innocent souls” on the massive failure.
Federal regulators combed through the laws and processes for how the Golden State issues licenses to certain commercial truck drivers, discovering a number of flaws. The 2025 Annual Program Review and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration both concluded that California’s commercial driver’s license (CDL) system had “systemic policy, procedural, and programming errors” concerning how it handled non-domiciled licenses.
Investigators issued an audit letter on September 26 that detailed how they discovered that the state had issued CDLs to non-domiciled drivers that were still valid after their federal work authorization expired.
On the same day, the U.S. Department of Transportation put out an interim final rule that tightened standards for non-domiciled CDLs across the country. The rule made changes to the eligibility of applicants holding specific employment-based visas. Utilizing basic common sense, the rule demands that every state verify an applicant’s legal status by using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.
California is also being accused of violating federal law when they upgraded the non-domiciled CDL of Jashanpreet Singh after a federal emergency rule and compliance notice was put out September 26th.
In his piece, Duffy took Newsom to the woodshed while also offering his prayers for the victims and their families.
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“My prayers are with the families of the victims of this tragedy. It would have never happened if Gavin Newsom had followed our new rules. California broke the law and now three people are dead and two are hospitalized. These people deserve justice. There will be consequences,” Duffy wrote, according to Fox News.
Singh received his CDL from the state of California on June 27. An audit performed on September 26 revealed compliance failures, but that didn’t stop officials from upgrading Singh’s driver’s license. Federal restrictions were completely ignored and as a result, three people died.
The new rule makes it clear that any “non-domiciled” commercial learner’s permit must not expire later than the end date on the individual’s federal immigration record or after a year’s time, whichever comes first. It also says states are to keep proof concerning the individual’s lawful presence on file for a period of two years.
What’s scary is the FMCSA review showed that this issue is by no means isolated. However, the probe found that almost a fourth of all the non-domiciled CDLs that were sampled were issued incorrectly. Many of them were handed out to driver’s that were ineligible, their legal presence lapsed, or whose license expiration dates didn’t line up with the dates listed on their immigration records.
California was then ordered to stop issuing new non-domiciled CDL licenses and to review existing license to ensure they were in compliance with the rules. If these licenses failed to meet federal standards, the state was told to revoke or reissue them. They were given a period of 30 days to get their ducks in a row or potentially get slapped with a massive $160 million loss in federal highway funding.
Almost a week after this, the license holder was involved in a deadly accident while operating a semi-truck that killed three people.