Feds threaten to withhold NC highway funding over immigrant driver's licenses

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is threatening to withhold $50 million in federal funding from North Carolina after determining that the state hasn’t followed policy when it comes to issuing nondomiciled commercial driver’s licenses.

Nondomiciled CDL’s are intended to be issued to foreign nationals who are in the United States legally.

In a news release Thursday, Duffy said 54% of nondomiciled CDL licenses in North Carolina were issued illegally under policies set by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The agency made that conclusion based on a sampling of 50 nondomiciled CDL licenses. The release does not say how many nondomiciled drivers carry North Carolina CDL licenses.

“North Carolina’s failure to follow the rules isn’t just shameful — it’s dangerous,” Duffy said in the release. “I’m calling on state leadership to immediately remove these dangerous drivers from our roads and clean up their system.”

In a letter to Gov. Josh Stein and N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles commissioner Paul Tine, the federal agency outlined the rules the state violated in granting licenses to 27 drivers. They include issuing licenses that would remain valid after the driver’s lawful presence in the United States expired; giving nondomiciled licenses to drivers who were ineligible to hold them; and allowing drivers to hold these licenses without first confirming their lawful presence in the country.

The letter gives the state 30 days to respond with steps it will take to void or rescind all nondomiciled licenses that violate those rules.

The DMV issued a brief statement late Thursday acknowledging the letter.

“NCDMV is committed to upholding safety and integrity in our licensing processes,” the agency said. “We have been collaborating closely with our federal partners for several months to resolve these matters that are impacting many U.S. states.”

Duffy and the USDOT did not say whether any of the drivers who received their North Carolina licenses illegally were involved in any crashes or been cited for poor driving.

But Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., said he worries about the safety of North Carolina drivers not knowing whether the CDL drivers went through proper training to get their licenses.

“I’ve just seen horrific accidents over the decades of my time on the road,” Budd said, “and I just don’t want that to happen in our state because of any reason. But this only makes it worse when you get these folks that they’re not compliant. Maybe they could go back through and be vetted and meet the standards fine. Then if they meet the law, but you should not let these folks like this slip through the system.”

The FMCSA carried out a nationwide audit of nondomiciled CDLs following an executive order from President Donald Trump on truck driver roadway safety. Derek Barrs, administrator of FMCSA, called North Carolina’s noncompliance level “egregious.”

“Under Secretary Duffy, we will not hesitate to hold states accountable and protect the American people,” Barrs said.

Before speaking with McClatchy, Budd sent the news outlet a written statement saying that it’s been known for years that North Carolina’s DMV “has been a complete disaster from long wait times to paperwork issues and beyond.”

“Today, the Department of Transportation and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration exposed North Carolina’s unacceptable failure rate when it comes to improperly issuing nondomiciled commercial driver’s licenses to ineligible individuals, including illegal immigrants,” Budd said.

Budd said in an interview that as a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce he wants to see if there is legislation he can put forward to solve the problems highlighted by USDOT. But he said he hopes Stein and DOT “quickly clean up this mess left to them by the previous administration and get North Carolina back into compliance as soon as possible.”

To do so, Duffy is calling on North Carolina officials to:

—Pause the issuance of nondomiciled CDLs;

—Identify all unexpired nondomiciled CDLs that don’t meet FMCSA regulations;

—Revoke and reissue all noncompliant nondomiciled CDLs that do comply with federal requirements;

—Review all procedural and programming errors, training and quality assurance problems, insufficient policies and practices and other issues that led to this.

If North Carolina fails to comply with these demands, Duffy vowed to withhold funding.

“I think they should do a deep internal audit to figure out all the procedural and programming errors,” Budd said. “Was it training issues? Were there quality assurance problems? Were the policies wrong? The practices wrong? Or did people just turn their head the other way and anything else that led to this problem — these nondomiciled CDLs that didn’t meet federal rules?”

In June, the U.S. Department of Transportation began a nationwide audit of how states issue nondomiciled commercial driver’s licenses to immigrant drivers. Duffy said the lax immigration policies of the Biden administration had allowed millions of people into the country illegally and suggested many had obtained CDLs.

“Our audit is about protecting the safety of families on the road and upholding the integrity of CDLs held by America’s truckers,” Duffy said in a statement. “Every state must follow federal regulations and ensure only qualified, properly documented drivers are getting behind the wheel of a truck.”

In September, USDOT announced stricter requirements for nondomiciled CDL drivers, including employment-based visas and mandatory federal immigration status checks. States that failed to comply faced punishment.

The most high profile was California, which USDOT said had improperly issued 17,000 nondomiciled CDLs. On Wednesday, Duffy announced that the federal government would withhold about $160 million in transportation money from the state for failing to revoke them by Jan. 5.

Other states that have been put on notice include Texas, South Dakota, Colorado and Washington.

Critics of the USDOT policy say the government has failed to show that nondomiciled CDL drivers are any more dangerous than others.

Bhupinder Kaur, director of operations for United Sikhs, an immigrant group heavily represented in the trucking industry, said the fear and confusion caused by the government policy would worsen existing driver shortages.

“America’s trucking industry runs on immigrant labor — and Sikh drivers are at its heart,” Kaur said in a statement. “This rule punishes people for who they are, not how they drive. It sends an unmistakable message that bias, not safety, is shaping federal transportation policy.”