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California will lose an additional $160 million for delaying the revocations of 17,000 commercial driver\u2019s licenses<\/a> for immigrants, federal transportation officials announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy already withheld $40 million<\/a> in federal funding because he said California isn\u2019t enforcing English proficiency requirements for truckers.<\/p>\n The state notified these drivers in the fall that they would lose their licenses after a federal audit found problems that included licenses for truckers and bus drivers that remained valid long after an immigrant\u2019s visa expired. More than one-quarter of the small sample of California licenses that investigators reviewed were unlawful.<\/p>\n But then last week California said it would delay those revocations until March after immigrant groups sued<\/a> the state because of concerns that some groups were being unfairly targeted. Duffy said the state was supposed to revoke those licenses by Monday. <\/p>\n Duffy is pressuring California<\/a> and other states to make sure immigrants who are in the country illegally aren\u2019t granted the licenses. <\/p>\n \u201cOur demands were simple: follow the rules, revoke the unlawfully-issued licenses to dangerous foreign drivers, and fix the system so this never happens again,\u201d Duffy said in a written statement. \u201c(Gov.) Gavin Newsom has failed to do so \u2014 putting the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of the American people.”<\/p>\n Newsom’s office did not immediately respond after the action was announced Wednesday afternoon. <\/p>\n The federal government began cracking down<\/a> during the summer. The issue became prominent 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<\/a> in August. <\/p>\n Duffy previously threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from California<\/a>, Pennsylvania,<\/a> Minnesota, New York,<\/a> Texas, South Dakota, Colorado, and Washington after audits found significant problems under the existing rules, including commercial licenses being valid long after an immigrant truck driver\u2019s work permit expired. He had dropped the threat to withhold $160 million from California after the state said it would revoke the licenses.<\/p>\n Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek Barrs said California failed to live up to the promise it made in November to revoke all the flawed licenses by Jan. 5.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will not accept a corrective plan that knowingly leaves thousands of drivers holding noncompliant licenses behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks in open defiance of federal safety regulations,\u201d Barrs said.<\/p>\n Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers who shouldn\u2019t have licenses or can\u2019t speak English<\/a> off the road. They also applauded the Transportation Department\u2019s moves to go after questionable commercial driver\u2019s license schools<\/a>. <\/p>\n The spotlight has been on Sikh truckers because the driver in the Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash<\/a> in California in October are both Sikhs. So the Sikh Coalition, a national group defending the civil rights of Sikhs, and the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit<\/a> on behalf of the California drivers. They said immigrant truck drivers were being unfairly targeted<\/a>. <\/p>\n Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses immigrants can receive only represent about 5% of all commercial driver\u2019s licenses or about 200,000 drivers. The Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions<\/a> that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court put the new rules on hold<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n