(The Center Square) — A Washington, D.C.-based immigration watchdog group filed a lawsuit Wednesday against New York after the state’s motor vehicle registry rejected a request for information about non-citizens who’ve been issued commercial driving licenses.
The lawsuit, filed by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, alleges that the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles is in violation of the state’s public records laws over its “blanket denial” of a Freedom of Information Law request seeking “basic” statistics and policies for its commercial driver’s license.
Lawyers for the conservative watchdog said it submitted a FOIA request to the agency in October 2025 seeking “straightforward information” such as the frequency and pass and fail rates of CDL tests administered in languages other than English and the number of non-domiciled CDLs issued to U.S. citizens versus “aliens” who took the required exam.
But the DMV took months to respond to the group’s request, the lawsuit claims, and then billed the group $2,000 for the records. Then, abruptly, the state agency issued a “blanket denial” for the documents citing privacy issues, lawyers for the group wrote in the federal complaint.
“The New York DMV has now spent more than a year inventing new reasons to hide basic information about how it licenses the drivers of tractor-trailers and buses,” Dale Wilcox, FAIR’s executive director and general counsel, said in a statement. “First they delayed. Then they demanded payment. Then they claimed that we are functionally an immigration enforcement agency and that ordinary licensing statistics are secret law-enforcement materials.
“New Yorkers and the rest of the country have a right to know whether the DMV is complying with federal safety standards. Stonewalling does not make the roads safer,” Wilcox said.
The Trump administration is also cracking down on truck drivers who lack English proficiency and has sought to prohibit states from issuing non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses. A federal appeals court judge blocked the policy changes in November, but several states have paused new CDL applications as the legal challenge plays out.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requires commercial vehicle drivers to be able to read and speak basic English, understand highway traffic signs and traffic signals, among other requirements.
Homeland Security Secretary MarkWayne Mullin has claimed that most of the “illegal immigrant” drivers involved in deadly and near-fatal incidents were “given their CDLs in sanctuary cities.” He has vowed to crack down on drivers and states issuing them driver’s licenses.
The federal agency arrested more than 800 truckers for “unsafe driving” during a three-day operation in late July, including more than three dozen who could not speak English, Mullin said.
To date, the U.S. Department of Transportation has revoked nearly 9,500 commercial licenses for failing to meet the president’s reinstated English-language proficiency requirements.
In September, the DOT shut down several training schools for commercial driver’s licenses in New York and New Jersey, claiming they were passing applicants who lacked basic English proficiency. The schools were among 110 nearly 2 dozen states shut down by the DOT and Homeland Security for English-language proficiency violations. Another 160 schools were shut down for failing to meet federal training regulations, authorities said.
In December, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy threatened to freeze $73 million from New York. He said issuing commercial driver’s licenses for immigrants could result in the “total decertification” of the state’s CDL program.
The state DOT has previously defended its policies on commercial licenses and accused Duffy of “lying” about New York’s laws “in a desperate attempt to distract from the failing, chaotic administration he represents.”
— Chris Wade, The Center Square contributor
Be the first to comment