After California paused a plan to cancel the licenses of thousands of immigrant truckers, federal officials announced Wednesday they would withhold $160 million in transportation funds from the state. <\/p>\n
The state was set to revoke 17,000 commercial driver\u2019s licenses for immigrants by Jan. 5 but instead extended the deadline amid the threat of a civil class-action lawsuit by immigrant rights groups.<\/p>\n
Then the U.S. Department of Transportation took action, exacerbating the ongoing conflict between California and Washington<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s reckoning day for Gavin Newsom and California. Our demands were simple: follow the rules, revoke the unlawfully-issued licenses to dangerous foreign drivers, and fix the system so this never happens again,\u201d Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. \u201cGavin Newsom has failed to do so \u2014 putting the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n Gov. Newsom\u2019s office referred a request for comment to state transportation officials.<\/p>\n The California Department of Motor Vehicles said in a statement that it did not approve of Wednesday\u2019s action and that it had been compliant with state and federal regulations. <\/p>\n \u201cWe strongly disagree with the federal government\u2019s decision to withhold vital transportation funding from California \u2014 their action jeopardizes public safety because these funds are critical for maintaining and improving the roadways we all rely on every day,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n The $160 million in funding being withheld is in addition to the $40 million that Duffy pulled from the state last year. He claims the state is not enforcing English proficiency requirements for truckers, but state officials say they have been in compliance.<\/p>\n The standoff between Newsom and Duffy began in June when Duffy carried out a nationwide audit of state programs that issued commercial driver\u2019s licenses to immigrants who were authorized to work in the country.<\/p>\n The audit was prompted by a fatal accident in Florida, where a Punjabi truck driver<\/a>, who was living in the country illegally, killed three people.<\/p>\n The federal audit, conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which is tasked with improving the safety of commercial vehicles, found that California had wrongfully issued licenses with expiration dates that surpassed those on work visas and called for the revocation of 17,000 commercial driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n The federal agency also tightened its rules<\/a>, making it harder for some immigrant drivers to obtain the licenses.<\/p>\n The Department of Motor Vehicles notified the drivers in the fall that they would lose their licenses in January. But last week, state officials said it would delay the cancellation<\/a> of those licenses until March after the Sikh Coalition and the Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit<\/a> alleging that the DMV failed to offer proper recourse for affected drivers, refused to renew or issue new commercial driver\u2019s licenses, and violated their rights.<\/p>\n Bhupinder Kaur \u2014 director of operations at United Sikhs<\/a>, a national human and civil rights organization \u2014 has told The Times that the cancellations disproportionately affect Sikh, Punjabi, Latino<\/a> and other immigrant drivers who are essential to California\u2019s freight economy.<\/p>\n Last month, as he announced the lawsuit, Munmeeth Kaur, legal director of the Sikh Coalition, called on the state to fix its mistakes.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the court does not issue a stay, we will see a devastating wave of unemployment that harms individual families, as well as the destabilization of supply chains on which we all rely,\u201d he said. \u201cThese drivers have spent years anchoring their lives to these careers, only to now face potential economic ruin through no fault of their own \u2014 they deserve better, and California must do better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After California paused a plan to cancel the licenses of thousands of immigrant truckers, federal officials announced Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":501153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[11030,7091,1582,276,19135,204385,19728,50199,1854,224838,2961,20506,224,5337,8152,84577,290,224839,11004],"class_list":{"0":"post-501152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-action","9":"tag-american-people","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-cancellation","13":"tag-commercial-driver","14":"tag-director","15":"tag-duffy","16":"tag-gavin-newsom","17":"tag-immigrant-trucker","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-license","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-safety","23":"tag-sikh-coalition","24":"tag-state","25":"tag-state-transportation-official","26":"tag-statement"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115859101260564822","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}