Immigration agents are conducting enforcement operations at truck stops, rest areas and weigh stations across the U.S. as the Trump administration expands a broader campaign targeting foreign-born commercial drivers through roadside enforcement, licensing restrictions and scrutiny of training schools, according to NBC News.
The site verified more than a dozen videos showing immigration enforcement agents at such locations, many filmed during August's Operation Highway Shield. Several appear to show men being detained, including footage of agents leading a handcuffed driver from a semitruck to an SUV at a New Jersey Turnpike truck stop.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in early August that Highway Shield removed more than 800 truckers from the road, including 50 undocumented immigrants. DHS told NBC News that ICE is targeting people unlawfully present in the country and investigating fraud that puts unqualified drivers behind the wheel, denying that drivers are being targeted simply because they are immigrants.
The enforcement is affecting how some drivers operate, according to industry representatives. Raman Dhillon, founder of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, told NBC that immigrant truckers are avoiding jurisdictions that cooperate with ICE, sometimes taking more difficult routes, and may skip rest areas because they fear detention.
"If the driver feels that they're going to be picked up in an extra rest area and they need to go rest, what do you think they're going to do?" Dhillon said. "They're going to miss that rest area."
The roadside operations are one part of a wider federal crackdown. The Transportation Department recently removed 110 commercial driver training schools from its federal registry after linking them to more than 5,000 drivers who failed English-language proficiency tests. Regulators are seeking to remove more than 160 additional providers and have launched a nationwide review of third-party CDL testing.
The administration is also defending an FMCSA rule expected to remove roughly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders from the road, as Landline Media reports. The rule makes asylum seekers, refugees, asylees and DACA recipients ineligible and no longer accepts an employment authorization document by itself for eligibility.
Drivers challenging the rule say FMCSA lacks evidence that those excluded are less safe. The agency says the restrictions instead address deficiencies in vetting, including states' inability to access applicants' foreign driving histories.
