1,500 migrants who don’t speak English were booted from their Truck Driving jobs after the Trump administration started aggressively enforcing English requirements
The first group of unqualified migrant drivers – who were fast tracked into their positions during the Biden administration – have officially been removed from America’s highways making the US a safer place to drive, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, hundreds of thousands of migrants—most who didn’t speak English or go through background checks- hit the roads in massive semis.
Many of those drivers are illegal migrants, or were allowed into the country through one of Biden’s migrant programs – and were allowed to get CDL’s despite not being able to speak English or pass any tests.
The ‘migrant priority’ pushed American workers out of their positions.
Because of Trump’s April Executive order truck drivers are going through intensified inspections, where drivers who fail English are immediately put out-of-service.
There have been numerous instances of migrants who don’t speak English – many of whom are illegal or on temporary visas -operating massive semi-trucks without skills or oversight, crashing into vehicles and killing Americans.
Just a few examples are:
Solomun Weldekeal Araya, North Austin, Texas, 2025: He killed 5 people (including a 4-year-old child and an infant); He is from Ethiopia, on a work visa, doesn’t speak english and was arrested for intoxication after crashing an 18-wheeler while transporting for Amazon.
Alexis Osmani Gonzalez-Companioni, Interstate 20 near Terrell, Texas, 2025: He killed 6 people (including a 15-year-old); the migrant driver who was possibly from Cuba fell asleep at the wheel of a semi-truck, causing a chain-reaction crash; He has been charged with manslaughter.
Ignacio Cruz-Mendoza, US Highway 285 near Conifer, Colorado, 2024: He killed 1 person (motorcyclist Scott Miller); the illegal migrant was from Mexico, who had been deported 16 times – yet he was still operating the semi-truck and caused the fatal collision
Biden programs:
H-2B Visa Surge for Fiscal Year 2025 (March 2025):
The Biden administration nearly doubled H-2B visas for non-agricultural workers, adding 64,716 slots explicitly available for truck drivers and other seasonal roles, building on prior expansions that brought in hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Work Permit Accelerations and TPS Redesignations (September 2024):
Biden extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to nearly 472,000 Venezuelans, granting immediate work authorizations that allowed them to quickly get jobs in the trucking industry.
This, paired with faster processing for employment documents, (AKA less checks, tests and regulations) quickly added more than 1.4 million migrant parolees into the workforce – despite the backlog that hadn’t gone through background checks, verifications or other requirement verifications.
Refugee Admissions (Fiscal Year 2024, Ending September 2024):
Biden resettled a record 100,000 refugees—the highest in three decades—through the U.S. Refugee
Admissions Program (USRAP), with many getting immediate work permits when they arrived; this capped a four-year total that was more than 285,000 refugees under Biden, prioritizing migrants from Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
CBP One App Entries (Through December 2024): Almost 1 Million migrants came into the country through the CBP One app since it started in January 2023.
They were paroled into the U.S. and granted work authorizations for jobs including trucking; This released more than 1.4 million inadmissible migrants into communities, without screening or vetting.
Grants for CDL Training Expansion (August-September 2023-2024):
Biden’s The Department of Transportation awarded $48 million in grants to states for CDL programs, targeting migrants – which gave most all opportunities to refugees through apprenticeships and streamlined licensing.
Trucking Apprenticeship and Women in Trucking Initiatives (2022-2023):
Biden launched the Women of Trucking Advisory Board and scaled Registered Apprenticeship programs, which really focused on giving work permits to migrants.
This built on humanitarian parole expansions allowing migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. to immediately get trucking jobs.
Trucking Action Plan Rollout (December 2021-April 2022):
Biden’s flagship plan doubled CDL licences to over 876,000 by expediting state processes, giving $57 million in funding, and waiving certain requirements; this opened doors for migrants through non-domicile licenses and pressure to hire migrant drivers.
