The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked the Trump-Vance administration’s emergency safety rule, a rule designed to keep America’s highways safe from unvetted foreign drivers.
The court sided not with public safety, not with the families of crash victims, but with activist groups, blue-city governments, and unions who argued that asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients should continue holding commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) despite major questions about identity verification, training standards, and foreign driving histories.
The stay halts the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) new rule limiting CDLs to individuals on verifiable, trackable visa categories, H-2A, H-2B, and E-2.
The rule excluded categories where driving and identity records cannot be confirmed, including asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients.
More from Fox News:
“A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. ruled on Thursday the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) restrictions on immigrants obtaining commercial driver’s licenses cannot be enforced.
[…]
The court found the federal government did not follow proper procedure when creating the new rule, or explain how the rule would promote safety.
Judges also noted Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration data shows about 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses belong to immigrants, though they only account for about 0.2% of fatal crashes.
[…]
The new DOT restrictions would allow immigrants who hold three specific classes of visas to obtain commercial licenses valid for one year, and require immigration status to be confirmed via a federal database.
Though the rules would disqualify about 10,000 of the 200,000 current immigrants with commercial licenses, the rules would not be enforced—meaning drivers could keep their licenses until they expire.”
The Trump administration acted after a fatal Florida truck crash caused by an illegal immigrant driver, one of multiple deadly incidents prompting FMCSA to re-evaluate who states were allowing behind the wheel of 40-ton vehicles.
But even that wasn’t enough for the federal judges in D.C., who decided to “temporarily” block the rule while lawsuits move forward.
California’s DMV admitted to illegally issuing 17,000 commercial licenses to non-domiciled foreign nationals, many of whom had no verifiable driving history whatsoever.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy called the revelations “just the tip of the iceberg,” as FMCSA now forces California to revoke the illegitimate licenses and re-audit their entire CDL program.
In 2023, Minnesota Democrats passed the “Driver’s License for All” law, set to give an astonishing 81,000 illegal immigrants state driver’s licenses, the very same IDs used to register to vote online.
All that’s needed is a license number.
No proof of citizenship.
No identity verification.
No questions asked.
The post D.C. Appeals Court STRIKES DOWN Trump DOT’s Safety Rules — Allows Immigrants to Obtain Commercial Licenses Again Despite Fatal Florida Truck Crash appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.