Last August 12, on Florida’s Turnpike near Fort Pierce, Harjinder Singh attempted an illegal U-turn through an “Official Use Only” median cut. His tractor-trailer jackknifed and blocked every northbound lane. A minivan carrying three Americans had nowhere to go. They died on impact. Singh, a 28-year-old Indian national who crossed the southern border illegally in 2018, held a California commercial driver’s license. He had already flunked the written CDL exam 10 times in just two months in Washington state before that state handed him a license anyway. California then issued him a separate non-domiciled CDL in July 2024. Post-crash testing revealed he could correctly answer only 2 of 12 English-language questions and identify just 1 of 4 traffic signs. He now sits in a St. Lucie County jail, without bond, facing three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of manslaughter. An ICE detainer waits. The case moves forward.
This was not random. FMCSA’s final rulemaking identified 17 fatal crashes in 2025 caused by non-domiciled CDL holders who would have been ineligible under the new standards. Those crashes killed 30 people. The geography stretched from Wyoming tunnels to California highways to interstate corridors across the country. The common thread never changed: unvetted foreign nationals behind the wheel of 80,000-pound machines.
I have spent enough time in finance to know when a system is being gamed, and the same analytical lens applies here. Sanctuary-state DMVs converted the non-domiciled CDL into an open backdoor. They issued credentials to drivers who couldn’t read English signage, who purchased fraudulent foreign licenses, or who passed through CDL mills that certified English fluency they demonstrably lacked. Federal law never authorized states to hand out operating licenses for lethal equipment to illegal immigrants or unverified foreign nationals. Some DMVs did exactly that at an industrial scale.
The mechanics of the fraud were straightforward. Singh’s Washington training company certified his English proficiency in writing, a certification that post-crash testing demolished in minutes. Singh had also received a speeding ticket from New Mexico State Police on July 3, just weeks before the Florida crash, with no record that troopers administered the federally required English proficiency assessment at the stop. This is what regulatory capture looks like in practice: paperwork certifying compliance while 40-ton trucks roll down our highways driven by men who cannot read the signs.
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy responded with actual enforcement muscle, which in Washington is rarer than advertised. After the Florida crash, FMCSA conducted a nationwide CDL audit. The numbers were damning. In New York, a federal sample of 200 non-domiciled CDL records found 107 issued in violation of federal law — a 53 percent failure rate covering roughly 33,000 issued licenses. Duffy gave the state 30 days to comply. New York refused. On April 16, FMCSA withheld $73.5 million in federal highway funding from the state. California fared worse: ordered to revoke approximately 17,000 improperly issued CDLs, the state has now forfeited roughly $200 million in federal funds. Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, and Washington were also cited for systemic violations. A new federal rule, effective March 16, 2026, restricts non-domiciled CDL eligibility to holders of specific employment-based nonimmigrant visas — H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 — and requires live immigration-status verification. The rule is expected to remove nearly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders from the road.
Critics argue the crackdown punishes the trucking industry or unfairly targets immigrants. That argument misses the actual policy. Lawful foreign workers holding qualifying visas who pass every required test remain eligible. Nobody with a functioning moral compass should accept a system that places 80,000-pound vehicles in the hands of people who cannot read highway signs or who bought their credentials through a fraud mill. American truckers grind through rigorous exams, maintain federal logbooks, and carry real legal exposure when they cut corners. Equal standards are not discrimination. They are the baseline.
When I coached youth sports on weekends, the families in those stands shared the same highways Singh was permitted to operate on. Every road in this country is someone’s commute, someone’s school carpool, someone’s last trip home. Three families in Florida buried loved ones because a state agency prioritized political cover over public safety. That is not a policy disagreement. That is a moral failure.
The remedies are already moving, but not fast enough. Every state must complete the audits and revoke every illegal non-domiciled CDL still on the books. Congress should codify English-only testing requirements into federal law and make CDL fraud a serious federal felony. Highway funding must remain conditioned on full compliance. Roadside inspectors need clear authority to remove drivers who cannot communicate during a standard stop.
Secretary Duffy ended years of open-border negligence that treated our interstate system like an unregulated international parking lot. Thirty families spent 2025 learning the cost of that negligence. Americans deserve roads where the only variable is whether the driver in front of you actually earned the credential behind the wheel. Our families travel those same roads every day. We all deserve better.
Jay Rogers is President of Alpha Strategies and a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.
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