Court blocks new limits on immigrant drivers

The Transportation Department's new restrictions that would severely limit which immigrants can get commercial driver's licenses to drive a semitrailer truck or bus have been put on hold by a federal appeals court.

The court in the District of Columbia ruled Thursday that the rules Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in September a month after a truck driver not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people can't be enforced right now.

The court said the federal government didn't follow proper procedure in drafting the rule and failed to "articulate a satisfactory explanation for how the rule would promote safety." The court said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's own data shows that immigrants who hold these licenses account for roughly 5% of all commercial driver's licenses but only about 0.2% of all fatal crashes, the court said.

Duffy has been pressing this issue in California because the driver in the Florida crash received a license in California, and an audit of that state's records showed that many immigrants received licenses in California that were valid long after their work permits expired. Earlier this week, California revoked 17,000 commercial driver's licenses because of that problem. Those licenses were invalidated under the older existing rules, not by the new proposed restrictions affected by this court order.

The court ruling focused on procedural issues such as whether the Transportation Department properly consulted with states before issuing the new rules.

The new restrictions on these licenses would only allow immigrants who hold three specific classes of visas to be eligible to get the licenses. States would also have to verify an applicant's immigration status in a federal database. The licenses would be valid for up to one year unless the applicant's visa expires sooner.

Under the new rules, only 10,000 of the 200,000 noncitizens who have commercial licenses would qualify for them, which would only be available to drivers who have an H-2a, H-2b or E-2 visa. H-2a is for temporary agricultural workers while H-2b is for temporary nonagricultural workers, and E-2 is for people who make substantial investments in a U.S. business. But the rules won't be enforced retroactively, so those 190,000 drivers would be allowed to keep their commercial licenses at least until they come up for renewal.

Information for this article was contributed by Kate Payne of The Associated Press.

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