Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes joined a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security after the federal agencies sought personal records of about 17 million truckers nationwide.
The lawsuit by 22 attorneys general, all Democrats, is intended to push back against the Trump administration's escalating crackdown on immigrant truck drivers.
Thousands of immigrant truck drivers have been pulled off roads in Arizona and other states for failing English proficiency tests or operating trucks with non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses obtained with temporary work permits.
New rules bar asylum seekers, Temporary Protected Status holders and those who qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
from getting non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses with temporary work permits.
The attorneys general argue subpoenas served by DHS and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration violate privacy laws and data-sharing contracts. They also allege the subpoena by the FMCSA was a cover for immigration enforcement.
But Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the federal government is entitled to such information and that the request was a necessary step to keep unsafe and unqualified drivers off the road. He pointed to the high-profile fatal crash along the Florida Turnpike in August 2025 involving a truck driver who was an undocumented immigrant.
"These radical state AGs want to make it harder for my Department to enforce the rules of the road and easier for dangerous illegal immigrant truck drivers to operate a big rig,” Duffy said in a news release Aug. 13. He added in an X post, "Liberal states ... are prioritizing illegal immigrant truckers over American citizens."
The USDOT touted operations that have taken around 56,000 truck drivers off the roads nationally. In Arizona, Border Patrol agents from the Yuma Sector arrested 52 people during a five-day operation in May, including 36 immigrant truck drivers with commercial driver's licenses, officials said.
At the center of the lawsuit is a little-known database called the Commercial Driver's License Information System, run by the nonprofit American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. States use the system to share information about applicants for commercial driver's licenses to flag disqualified drivers and ensure a driver is not already licensed in another state. Data provided to the database by the states include names, birth dates and Social Security numbers.
Commercial driver's licenses are necessary to drive heavy, large or specialized vehicles, like semitrucks. People who do not have citizenship but reside in the U.S. can receive a non-domiciled commercial driver's license.
While the federal government does have routine access to CDLIS for limited, specific searches, Mayes and the other attorneys argue that the demand for 17 million records over the last five years for immigration enforcement is an overreach.
"It is a 'John Doe subpoena' that unlawfully seeks to conduct a fishing expedition," the attorneys wrote. It "is needlessly overbroad and out of proportion to any legitimate interest DHS could have in the records."
Mayes, through spokesperson Richie Taylor, declined to comment.
Warren Petersen, Mayes' Republican opponent in the November election, blasted the lawsuit on X.
"Why is California Kris Mayes suing to keep dangerous truck drivers on the road?" Petersen wrote. "She opposed the secure the border act, failed to defend sex offender laws and now this. It is no wonder she is a pariah in the law enforcement community."
This lawsuit is the latest in a series of nearly 50 cases against the Trump administration by a coalition of attorneys general.
Prioritizing safety or immigration enforcement?
Foreign-born truck drivers are not new, but experts say the industry saw an influx of drivers post-pandemic.
Trucking industry groups like the Arizona Trucking Association have applauded the Trump administration's efforts, saying weak oversight of non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses issued by states led to a rise in immigrant truck drivers who did not meet long-standing English proficiency standards.
It "becomes a real safety issue" when a driver can't understand electronic road signs, said Tony Bradley, president and CEO of the Arizona Trucking Association.
"We've had foreign drivers be part of the trucking industry for a very long time, but it's the safety aspect that we're concerned about," he said.
But Cassandra Zimmer-Wong, an immigration policy analyst at More in Common, a nonprofit that studies political divisions, said there is no hard evidence that suggests immigrant truck drivers are less safe than American truck drivers. She added that the Trump administration's crackdown was based on few high-profile anecdotes of fatal crashes involving immigrant truck drivers.
Some truck drivers, like Navjot Singh, who is from India, were swept up in the operations. Singh said he showed the Border Patrol agent his California-issued commercial driver's license and told him he had a work permit tied to his pending asylum case, but the Border Patrol officer told him he was being detained anyway.
Daniel Gonzalez is a senior reporter for The Arizona Republic, covering immigration issues. Reach him at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com.
Lauren De Young covers transportation for The Arizona Republic. Reach her at ldeyoung@azcentral.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona joins lawsuit over immigration-linked trucker data sweep
