The Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that a nationwide crackdown on commercial trucking has resulted in 51 immigration detentions and 36 English language proficiency violations since the operation expanded beyond Florida earlier this year.
Operation Highway Shield began in Florida and has since spread to Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio, according to Fox News. Officials carried out 3,487 enforcement stops during the operation.
The stops resulted in 766 unsafe commercial vehicles or drivers placed out of service, 47 criminal charges filed, 39 incarcerations and three cargo theft recoveries totaling roughly $1 million in stolen freight, the DOT said.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator Derek Barrs defended the English proficiency requirement as a longstanding rule now being enforced. “It’s been the law for a long period of time,” Barrs said. “It’s a safety issue. … If there was a crash or something like that, I would want to make sure that driver would know how to respond, slow down for upcoming traffic or a crash that has happened up ahead.”
The enforcement push follows a string of deadly crashes nationwide involving drivers the Department of Homeland Security says were in the U.S. illegally or operating with commercial driver’s licenses they should never have received.
In one video from the Florida phase of the operation, a trooper asked a trucker what a road sign meant. The trucker replied, “No.” The trooper then asked what drivers should do if they saw the sign. The trucker again replied, “No.”
Florida troopers have said up to half of truckers at some weigh stations cannot meet English proficiency requirements.
The Trump administration has said federal immigration and commercial driving enforcement remains a top priority as the operation expands into new states. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy previously proposed restrictions limiting which noncitizens can obtain a license to drive a semi or a bus, and has threatened to pull federal funding from California, Washington and New Mexico over their enforcement of trucker English rules.
President Trump last week launched a separate “Freedom Hauler” initiative aimed at recruiting military veterans to fill trucking jobs through expedited commercial driver’s licenses, a follow-up effort tied to the broader crackdown.
