California revokes 17,000 driver's licenses. But the state disputes it is over immigration concerns

The Democratic governor's office said the unspecified violations were of state laws that were in place before the Republican Trump Administration recently tightened rules following a nationwide commercial driver’s license audit launched after a driver in the country illegally made a U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people.

Fatal truck crashes in Texas and Alabama earlier this year also highlight questions about these licenses. A fiery California crash involving an illegal immigrant truck driver last month that killed three more people only added to the concerns.

California state transportation officials didn’t immediately respond to questions seeking more details about why these licenses are being revoked.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday that California’s action to revoke these licenses is an admission that the state had acted improperly even though the state had previously defended its licensing standards.

Duffy previously imposed new restrictions on which immigrants can qualify for one of these commercial driver's licenses. He said earlier this fall that California and five other states had improperly issued commercial driver's licenses to noncitizens, but California is the only state Duffy took action against. He revoked $40 million in federal funding because he said California isn't enforcing English language requirements for truckers, and he has promised to take away another $160 million from the state over these improperly issued licenses.

″After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed. Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked,” Duffy said. ”This is just the tip of iceberg. My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semitrucks and school buses.”

Newsom's office said that every one of the drivers whose licenses are being revoked had valid work authorizations from the federal government.

“Once again, the Sean ‘Road Rules’ Duffy fails to share the truth — spreading easily disproven falsehoods in a sad and desperate attempt to please his dear leader," Newsom's spokesman Brandon Richards said.

The new rules for commercial driver's licenses that Duffy announced in September make getting commercial driver’s licenses extremely hard for immigrants because only three specific classes of visa holders will be eligible. States will also have to verify an applicant’s immigration status in a federal database. These licenses will be valid for up to one year unless the applicant’s visa expires sooner than that.

Under the new rules, only 10,000 of the 200,000 noncitizens who have commercial licenses would qualify for them, which would only be available to drivers who have an H-2a, H-2b or E-2 visa. H-2a is for temporary agricultural workers while H-2B is for temporary nonagricultural workers, and E-2 is for people who make substantial investments in a U.S. business. But the rules won’t be enforced retroactively, so those 190,000 drivers will be allowed to keep their commercial licenses at least until they come up for renewal.

Newsom's office said those new requirements were not in place at the time these 17,000 licenses were issued. But these drivers were given notices that their licenses will expire in 60 days.

Duffy said in September that investigators found that one quarter of the 145 licenses they reviewed in California shouldn't have been issued. He cited four California licenses that remained valid after the driver’s work permit expired — sometimes years after.

Newsom's office said the state followed guidance it received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about issuing these licenses to noncitizens.

Associated Press writer Sophie Austin contributed to this report from Sacramento, California.