The U.S. has immediately halted all issuance of visas for truck drivers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Thursday, as criticism boiled over within President Donald Trump’s base following a deadly crash.
“Effective immediately we are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers,” Rubio wrote on X.
“The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on US roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” he wrote.
Effective immediately we are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers.
The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers.---Advertisement---— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) August 21, 2025
Rubio’s order followed news that a truck driver had been charged with killing three people in a highway crash in Florida while making an illegal U-turn.
Harjinder Singh, who is from India, allegedly entered the United States illegally from Mexico and subsequently failed an English exam after the crash, according to federal officials.
The case has received extensive media coverage and has been championed politically in Florida, in the control of Trump’s Republican Party, complete with lieutenant governor flying west to California to personally extradite Singh along with immigration officers on Thursday.
The crash has turned political as Singh was issued his commercial license and lived in California — a state governed by the rival Democratic Party who stood opposed to Trump’s immigration enforcement.
The Trump administration assigned California Governor Gavin Newsom responsibility, as the state issued Singh a license. Newsom’s office pointed out that Singh had a work permit actually issued by the federal Trump administration and that California cooperated in deporting him.
Even prior to the crash, Republican lawmakers have been trying to make foreign truckers a target, noting an increase in crashes, but did not show evidence of a direct connection to immigrants. In June, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued an order to truck drivers to speak English.
Truck drivers in the U.S. are liable to pass a test for commercial a license that has long assessed whether they can speak English when it comes to basic road signs. But under 2016 guidance from former president Barack Obama that Duffy revoked, authorities did not remove truckers from the road solely for language problems.
According to federal statistics, demand prevailed and the number of foreign-born truck drivers in the U.S. more than doubled to 720,000 from 2000 to 2021. Foreign-born drivers presently make up 18% of the workforce level with the rest of the U.S. labor market, but a departure for a profession long associated with the white working class.
The biggest chunk of the foreign-born drivers are coming from Latin America, while fairly large numbers have come from India and Eastern European countries – especially Ukraine, industry groups said.
