- Federal order forces California to cancel certain commercial licenses.
- Affected drivers were legally present, but licenses exceeded limits.
- Trucking groups warn the move could worsen driver shortages.
Non-domiciled commercial drivers are individuals who are legally in the USA but without citizenship or permanent residency. In 2025, news broke that California and some other states issued driver’s licenses to such individuals with credentials that had expired after the person was legally allowed to be in the country.
After months of back and forth between the federal government and authorities in California, there’s a new development. Some 13,000 drivers just lost their licenses.
More: Feds Say 54% Of Immigrant Truck Driver Licenses In NC Are Illegal
This is a direct result of the federal government forcing the state to cancel the licenses. Federal law allows these individuals to obtain CDLs, but it also says that expiration dates must be in line with the person’s lawful time within the USA. The California DMV says it attempted to correct the problem by reissuing licenses with proper expiration dates, but the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration blocked the fix.
Why Were Licenses Revoked?
State officials pushed back on the decision, arguing the drivers had valid work authorization at the time their licenses were issued and met all testing, language, and safety requirements. “This federal administration is using their war on immigration to remove qualified, hardworking commercial drivers from our workforce,” said DMV Director Steve Gordon in a statement to NBC San Diego.
The federal government seems to have little trust in California’s methodology. It currently has a hold on the state’s ability to process new CDLs. Drivers can and have reapplied, but until federal regulators lift the pause, California is not able to issue new licenses. For the time being, non-domiciled individuals can apply for and be granted a general Class C license to drive passenger vehicles. Beyond that, legally, they’re not allowed to drive a commercial truck.
Industry insiders say this could negatively impact an already strained trucking sector. Drivers and haulers argue about whether a driver shortage is the result of pay or other factors, but a shortage is a shortage no matter the reasons. California knows this better than most as the state that moves the most freight. At this point, the local DMV is prioritizing impacted drivers and trying to help them get back on the road legally.
