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How many confirmed cases are there of commercial drivers with valid CDLs who were later found to be undocumented immigrants (by year)?
Executive summary
Available sources do not provide a year-by-year count of confirmed cases where commercial drivers holding valid CDLs were later found to be undocumented; reporting instead focuses on recent agency actions, rule changes, and aggregate figures such as nearly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders targeted by FMCSA and California’s planned cancellation of roughly 17,000 CDLs [1] [2]. Federal agencies and trade groups dispute elements of the scale and causes, and court action has temporarily blocked the newest federal restrictions [3] [4] [5].
1. No public dataset in these sources gives annual confirmed counts
The documents and articles in your search results describe policy actions, rulemaking, audits and headline totals but do not publish an annual breakdown of “confirmed cases” of commercial drivers who held a valid CDL and were later determined to be undocumented; available sources do not mention a year-by-year list or table answering your exact question [3] [1] [2].
2. What reporters and FMCSA have published instead: aggregate and enforcement numbers
FMCSA’s interim final rule and related reporting emphasize that nearly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders could be affected by stricter eligibility limits and that the agency identified multiple fatal crashes involving non-domiciled CDL holders in 2025 (FMCSA counts “at least five fatal crashes” since the start of 2025 and points to broader compliance problems) [6] [1]. News outlets report California’s DMV notified about 17,000 immigrant truck drivers that their CDLs would be revoked amid that scrutiny [2] [7].
3. Definitions matter — “non-domiciled,” “non-citizen,” “undocumented”
The sources distinguish non-domiciled CDLs (issued to foreign domiciliaries in some circumstances) from resident CDLs and from various immigration statuses. FMCSA guidance historically allowed certain foreign-origin drivers with an Employment Authorization Document or valid passport + I-94 to obtain non-domiciled CDLs [8]. Many pieces of coverage conflate “non-domiciled,” “non-citizen” and “undocumented,” which complicates any effort to count only drivers who were both unlawfully present and issued CDL credentials while undocumented — the underlying records and audits cited in the reporting do not always make that legal-status distinction explicit [8] [9].
4. FMCSA’s policy response and numbers it highlights
FMCSA’s interim final rule framed the problem as both safety and compliance: it pointed to recent fatal crashes involving non-domiciled CDL holders (citing “at least five fatal crashes” in 2025) and proposed limiting state authority to issue non-domiciled CDLs, which FMCSA estimated could affect almost 200,000 holders nationwide [6] [1]. Those numbers describe potential program impact and safety incidents, not a verified, year-by-year tally of drivers later proven to be undocumented [6] [1].
5. State-level action: California’s revocations as an example
Multiple outlets reported that California planned to cancel about 17,000 commercial licenses issued to immigrant truckers as the state faced federal scrutiny [2] [7]. That figure is a state action count and does not equal a nationwide, legally adjudicated count of drivers who were discovered to be undocumented after holding a valid CDL; reporting notes differences between state practices and federal verification steps [2] [7].
6. Conflicting perspectives and legal pushback
The Transportation Department’s rule and FMCSA’s claims have been met with pushback: a federal appeals court stayed the new rules on procedural and justification grounds, and reporting highlights disagreement over whether the agency properly tied safety evidence to the sweeping restrictions [3] [4]. The American Trucking Associations called out errors in CDL databases and warned that headline counts can be inflated by record errors, which undercuts simplistic nationwide tallies [5].
7. Why you can’t reliably produce a per‑year “confirmed undocumented CDL holder” table from these sources
The available reporting and federal documents provide incident summaries, aggregate program estimates and administrative actions but do not publish the necessary underlying immigration-verification datasets or a validated, year-by-year list of drivers who were licensed as civilians with valid CDLs and subsequently found to be undocumented. Absent those primary records, any per‑year count would be speculative; available sources do not supply the raw entries or methodology to construct that time series [3] [8] [1].
8. How to get the specific breakdown you asked for
To obtain a year-by-year confirmed count you would need access to FMCSA and state motor vehicle agency records that link CDL issuance/decertification with immigration-status determinations, or FOIA responses and state-level audits that explicitly enumerate cases by year. None of the articles or FMCSA materials in your results publishes that cross‑matched, annualized dataset [3] [6] [2].
If you want, I can draft specific FOIA request language and suggest which state and federal offices to ask for the precise, annualized data you’re seeking.