The US Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy recently announced sweeping changes to significantly restrict the issuance of Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDL) to immigrant workers with temporary work authorization. The rule changes the federal minimum eligibility requirements. For example, immigrants with pending asylum cases can no longer receive a CDL only with a work permit. Duffy’s comments were aimed at California, whose policies have been under strict scrutiny after Harjinder Singh was involved in an accident in Florida. Also, a toxicology report has cleared US Sikh truck driver Jashanpreet Singh of charges of driving under influence of intoxicants when he crashed his truck on a highway in California's Ontario on 23 Oct. Earlier, in September 2025, the DOT issued an Interim Final Rule (ITR) that changes the requirements that states must follow when issuing or renewing a Non-Domiciled CDL or Commercial Learner’s Permit (CLP). The Sikh Coalition, along with the US legal aid and civil rights organization Asian Law Caucus, has co-developed an analysis of the ITR in both English and Panjabi languages. The Sikh Coalition said: this change is not based on drivers’ English Language Proficiency. Instead, it is an argument that non-domiciled CDL holders are inherently dangerous to the public, and an effort to remove approximately 194K of them from the workforce. Meanwhile, more than 7.2K commercial truck drivers have been disqualified across the US in 2025 after failing mandatory English proficiency tests. California attorney Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division in US President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice said, 'Those responsible for these tragedies must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Unfortunately, in the fog of outrage, some are using these tragedies as an opportunity to attack Sikhs and Indian-origin drivers.' She is now facing a wave of racist abuse from far-right Make America Great Again supporters. Concurrently, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs confirmed that over 2,790 Indian nationals have been deported from the US for illegally staying in the country (earlier coverage).
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