California Plans to Reissue Contested Driver’s Licenses to Thousands of Immigrants

Thousands of immigrant truck drivers are breathing a sigh of relief after California said Tuesday it’s preparing to reissue commercial licences it planned to revoke after federal pressure.

State transportation officials confirmed that the Department of Motor Vehicles will start reissuing the contested licences to 17,000 immigrant drivers who were sent 60-day cancellation notices on Nov. 6. The agency has yet to clarify how that process will work.

“I was so happy,” said Amarjit Singh, a 41-year-old truck owner and driver who worried he wouldn’t be able to support his two young children or afford the $4,000 monthly payments on his truck if the state canceled his license on Jan. 6. “This is a very big relief.”

Singh, a Livermore resident whose work authorization is valid through 2029, first heard the news while making an afternoon delivery 90 miles away in Santa Rosa. He took a moment in his yellow sleeper truck cabin, with a 53-foot trailer, to pray in gratitude. When he made it home and told his wife, Zoraida, she cried, he said.

“It’s great news,” said Singh, who invested all his savings and borrowed money from relatives to purchase his truck in 2022 for $160,000. “It’s going to save my life, and it’s going to save my business.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation threatened to pull more than $150 million in highway funding from California unless the state addressed non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses, in which the driver’s work permit ended before the license expired, due to a DMV clerical error. A state review found at least 17,000 licenses with mismatched expiration dates, many of them held by Sikh men like Singh who fled persecution in India and sought asylum in the U.S.

The transportation and logistics industry is a major source of employment for Sikhs, a community with roots in Punjab, India, that has its largest U.S. population in California. About 150,000 Sikhs work in the trucking industry nationwide, according to estimates.

Non-domiciled CDLs, issued to noncitizens without permanent U.S. residency (or a green card), became a political flashpoint after incidents of fatal crashes involving immigrant truck drivers in Florida and other states.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in April, reinforcing English requirements for commercial vehicle drivers. In September, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced an emergency rule to exclude asylum seekers, refugees and other immigrants from holding these licenses, arguing it would improve safety on the roads. About 200,000 commercial drivers with valid work permits were expected to lose their licenses and jobs as a result.

“We have a vulnerable workforce here that [has] become a political football,” said Steve Viscelli, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the trucking industry.

Viscelli questioned whether any reliable evidence links safe driving with immigration status. He recommended the administration focus instead on enhancing job conditions and wages in the industry, especially in long-haul trucking.

“The best thing we can do for safety is to retain experienced, well-compensated professional drivers,” he said. “Experienced drivers are more knowledgeable, just more ready to handle those unexpected situations. And the problem is we can’t retain them.”

About 700,000 drivers have commercial licenses in California to operate large vehicles ranging from semi-trailers to oil tankers and school buses, according to the DMV. A federal court in Washington, D.C. halted the FMCSA rule in November after unions, drivers and others sued. The administration is preparing a permanent regulation and reviewing public comments.

The California DMV’s Nov. 6 cancellation letters said that only drivers who met the new FMCSA rule requirements may keep their commercial licenses. But the court’s decision putting that rule on hold meant the state could fix mismatched dates and issue CDLs to those who have valid work authorization and pass knowledge, skills and medical tests, according to several unions, elected officials and nonprofits that called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to intervene. Groups such as United Sikhs and the Sikh Coalition said they met with state officials seeking a resolution.

A spokesperson with the California State Transportation Agency, which oversees the DMV, told KQED early Tuesday that the agency could not issue or renew non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses due to the FMCSA findings of mismatched dates.

The DMV’s website has not yet updated its message that the federal rule requires the state to pause issuing these licenses. Members of WhatsApp driver chat groups, however, and several sources not authorized to speak with the media said they expected a good outcome for drivers would be announced soon.

The San Francisco Chronicle first reported California’s plans to start reissuing non-domiciled CDLs for drivers. The transportation agency spokesperson confirmed the news but declined to provide more information. Drivers said they have not yet received an email notification from the DMV.

It’s unclear how federal officials will react. The U.S. Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bhupinder Kaur, director of operations of advocacy group United Sikhs, said many drivers have contacted the nonprofit’s helpline with questions about what steps they should follow to keep their licenses.

Some reported that DMV offices they’d flocked to on Wednesday morning were still not sharing updated information.

Overall, Kaur said the ordeal left her and several relatives in the trucking business “on edge,” fearing that these licenses could still be taken away in the future and threatening families’ livelihoods. She added that some Sikh drivers and logistics businesses had already lost income as a result of the uncertainty.

“Immigrant truck drivers were turned into collateral damage in a federal power struggle,” Kaur said. “It should never have happened, and we hope it doesn’t happen again.”