The Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on Thursday that new rules by the Department of Transportation that place restrictions on immigrants obtaining commercial driver's licenses cannot be enforced.
The new rules were instated after Harjinder Singh, an Indian citizen who allegedly illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico in 2018, was accused of causing a tractor-trailer crash that killed three people in Fort Pierce, Florida. He pleaded not guilty to three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of manslaughter. He had received his commercial license from California.
The court argued that the federal government did not create the law under proper procedures and failed to explain how it would promote safety. They also noted that, according to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration data, immigrant truck drivers make up roughly 5 percent of all commercial license holders but are involved in only 0.2 percent of fatal crashes.
The new rules blocked by the court would let immigrants with three types of visas get commercial licenses for one year, with their immigration status checked through a federal database. While about 10,000 of the 200,000 immigrant drivers would technically be disqualified, the rules wouldn't be enforced, meaning those drivers could keep their licenses until they expire.
This comes only days after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Wednesday that California had illegally issued 17,000 commercial licenses. Those license holders were notified that their licenses had been invalidated and were set to expire in 60 days. These developments also came after California Governor Gavin Newsom blamed the federal government for allowing an illegal immigrant to obtain a license.
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