New York may lose $73M in federal highway funds over flawed immigrant commercial driver’s licenses

New York routinely issues licenses to immigrants that may be valid long after they are legally authorized to be in the country, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday and he threatened to withhold $73 million in highway funds unless the system is fixed.

New York is the latest state Duffy has targeted in his effort to make sure truck and bus drivers are qualified to get licenses that he launched after a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. The Transportation Department has said it is auditing these non-domiciled licenses nationwide, but so far the only states he has threatened to sanction are all led by Democratic governors.

Duffy said federal investigators found that more than half of the 200 licenses they reviewed in New York were issued improperly with many of them defaulting to be valid for eight years regardless of when an immigrant’s work permit expires. And he said the state couldn’t prove it had verified these drivers’ immigration status for the 32,000 active non-domiciled commercial licenses it has issued.

“When more than half of the licenses reviewed were issued illegally, it isn’t just a mistake — it is a dereliction of duty by state leadership. Gov. (Kathy) Hochul must immediately revoke these illegally issued licenses,” Duffy said.

New York has 30 days to respond to these concerns. Hochul’s office did not immediately comment Friday.

Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses only represent about 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses. The Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license but a court put the new rules on hold.

Duffy has threatened to withhold millions from California, Pennsylvania and Minnesota after the audits found significant problems under the existing rules like commercial licenses being valid long after an immigrant truck driver’s work permit expired. That pressure prompted California to revoke 17,000 licenses.