Trump Team’s “Unprecedented Fraud Crackdown” Exposed as Total Bust

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s so-called “major fraud announcement” was just another lame attack on immigrants that won’t make roads any safer.

Speaking at a press conference Monday, the two officials declared the emergency shutdown of 110 commercial driver’s license, or CDL, schools, claiming they were responsible for 5,000 violations of federal safety standards requiring licensees to demonstrate English proficiency. “If you’re an illegal trucker, this is your worst nightmare,” Duffy wrote in a post on X Monday.

It didn’t take long for journalists at the event to pull apart the preposterous announcement.

One reporter pointed out that foreign-born drivers holding non-domiciled CDLs were responsible for just 17 fatal crashes in 2025. “The slant here has been strongly about illegals, foreign drivers, but yet it accounts, according to U.S. [Department of Transportation] stats I see, for one percent of the issue,” one reporter said.

Duffy pretended that the move had little to do with undocumented immigrants.

Sean Duffy gets brutally fact-checked by a reporter, immediately changes topic pic.twitter.com/iExWbc6OyM— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 31, 2026

“You could have migrated to this country, you could have done it legally, but if you don’t speak English, you’re still violating our long-standing safety rules that you have to speak English,” Duffy said. “So this is not just about people who have come into the country illegally.”

Numbers from previous years suggest that licensing status, rather than immigration status or national origin, is the more relevant factor in deadly crashes. In fatal large truck crashes in 2021, 22.5 percent of drivers reportedly had no CDL at all. So the secretary’s decision to shutter schools, undermining access to essential safety training, has the potential to make roadways more dangerous.

About 20 percent of truck drivers in the U.S. are immigrants, and just 5 percent hold non-domiciled licenses, issued by states to people who are legally authorized to work in the country but do not have a permanent legal residence in that state. In March, the Trump administration revoked the non-domiciled commercial licenses of 200,000 truck drivers.

Last month, Trump ranted that his administration would soon take action against undocumented immigrant truck drivers, who were “killing a lot of people.”

“They can’t read signs. Many of them are on drugs or alcohol, and they shouldn’t be driving these things,” Trump claimed, vowing that his administration would enforce English proficiency requirements. At the same time, the Department of Transportation made it easier for U.S. military veterans to acquire CDLs by allowing them to bypass certain requirements.

Duffy announced that DOT would shut down another 160 schools that were previously certified to train truck drivers, but lacked classrooms, adequate space for driving tests, and employed unlicensed instructors.