Federal immigration officers have been dispatched to truck weigh stations at select locations nationwide as part of the Trump administration’s effort to find, arrest, and deport illegal immigrants who were given commercial driver’s licenses, according to a senior Trump administration official.
White House border czar Tom Homan said federal law enforcement is on-site to identify and intercept the nearly 200,000 non-U.S. citizens who received CDLs from states despite their having illegally entered the United States.
“We’ve got a lot of people looking for, actually, some states we’re actually working weigh stations with the troopers trying to get these people as they’re coming through,” Homan told Fox News co-host Dana Perino on Tuesday. “So it’s a work in progress. President Trump’s serious about this. [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s] out there with the local law enforcement and state law enforcement.”
The Trump administration has continued to target progressive states that have allowed illegal immigrants to obtain CDLs, including after the most recent fatal traffic incident involving one such illegal immigrant CDL driver.
A Haitian man living in Massachusetts, Michael Bon, was arrested last week and accused of being the driver involved in a crash that killed a Pennsylvania state trooper, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Bon was charged with vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter.
“This Haitian illegal alien was RELEASED into our country by the Biden Administration, and the sanctuary state of Massachusetts gave him a Commercial Driver’s License,” DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “Now, because of these reckless policies, a Pennsylvania State Trooper is dead after a crash that was 100% preventable. Illegal aliens should not be driving trucks on America’s highways.”
Roughly 28,000 CDL drivers have had their licenses rescinded, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Homan said the challenge for the Trump administration has been that Democrat-run states have refused to turn over databases of CDL drivers to the federal government.
“The problem is we’re working very well with red states,” Homan said. “Blue states are still a struggle, right. Places like New York. I mean, ICE and [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] can’t even get access to the DMV database to run the checks. Thank God, you know, [Attorney General] Todd Blanche is suing these cities as they come up, and we’ve got to keep suing them, but we’re out there, you know, Dana, enforcing the law. We’re out there looking for these illegal aliens with CDLs.”
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Homan criticized Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) for allowing illegal immigrants to obtain state licenses to drive commercial trucks on public roads. Healey had defended the move in a recent interview as being a “matter of public safety” because “people are going to drive, with or without a license.”
“She is normalizing illegal immigration,” Homan said. “And that’s one of the drivers of illegal immigration.”