Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that he is cracking down on thousands of truck driving schools, giving them a 30-day time period in which to comply with the Trump administration’s rules for truck drivers.
In a press release from the Department of Transportation (DOT), it was revealed that roughly 3,000 commercial driver’s license (CDL) training providers that were on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Training Provider Registry (TPR) have been removed. The press release also added that more than 4,000 CDL training providers have been “placed on notice.”
“This administration is cracking down on every link in the illegal trucking chain,” Duffy said in a statement. “Under Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, bad actors were able to game the system and let unqualified drivers flood our roadways. Their negligence endangered every family on America’s roadways, and it ends today.”
Per the press release, the TPR “lists all providers authorized to offer federally required Entry-Level Driver Training for CDL students”:
The Training Provider Registry lists all providers authorized to offer federally required Entry-Level Driver Training for CDL students. This is the first step in FMCSA’s review of the 16,000 training providers listed on the TPR to identify and remove noncompliant providers.
The National Association of Truck Stop Owners (NATSO) reported in October 2024 that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that “immigrants comprise about 18% of employed drivers”:
The number of immigrants entering the trucking industry continues to increase. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that immigrants comprise about 18% of employed drivers and the number of foreign-born truck drivers more than doubled to more than 720,000 in 2021 from 315,981 in 2000.
A report by George Mason University’s Institute for Immigration Research found that about 59.8% of immigrant truck drivers are from Central America and the Caribbean, and 6.5% are from South America.
Breitbart News’s Bob Price reported that a “nationwide crackdown on foreign drivers” who have CDLs resulted in roughly 250 drivers in states such as Arizona, Indiana, Texas, and California being apprehended, with “many of the drivers” reportedly being in the country illegally.
A Policy and Advocacy Report from October 29, 2025, from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants described trucking as “a job that requires long nights and days away from loved ones.”
“It is a hard job that not many willingly sign up for,” the report added. “As a result, the industry has struggled to keep drivers on staff. Assailed by these steep labor shortages, immigrant workers have picked up the slack: 18% of truckers are foreign-born. Like so many other industries, immigrants fill the jobs others do not want.”
“For the first time in my 25-year career, we finally have an administration that acknowledges the truth: America does not have a truth-driver shortage — we have a [wage-cutting] labor-dumping crisis,” Shannon Everett, the founder of American Truckers United, told Breitbart News.
Everett added:
For years, large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers have been fast-tracked into commercial trucking with no vetting, inadequate training, and no requirement to pay prevailing wages. The result has been devastating: collapsing wages and working conditions for American truckers, a historic surge in fatal truck crashes, and a serious national-security vulnerability. This administration’s focus on enforcement and fair labor standards is long overdue and welcomed by those of us who have watched our industry be undermined.
