Commercial truck drivers hauling freight through Arizona on interstate highways say the Trump administration's escalating crackdown on immigrant truck drivers is forcing them to abandon their rigs along with their loads on the side of the road.
The Border Patrol for months has been stopping truck drivers on Interstate 40 near Kingman and Interstate 10 near Yuma and taking into custody immigrant truck drivers operating with non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses. "Non-domiciled" applies to people from another country who are living in the United States.
Trump administration officials say the crackdown is aimed at taking immigrant truck drivers off the highways who pose a danger to public safety because they don't speak English well enough to read
signs or communicate during safety inspections.
Federal immigration enforcement officers also are targeting immigrants who obtained non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses with work permits issued to immigrants with temporary legal ties to the United States, such as asylum-seekers, Temporary Protected Status holders or DACA recipients.
In May 2025, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration began strictly enforcing English proficiency standards by immediately removing from the roads truck drivers who fail English proficiency tests during inspections.
In September, the FMCSA also announced a new rule intended to block immigrants with work permits issued to asylum-seekers, Temporary Protected Status holders or DACA recipients from qualifying for non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses.
State motor vehicle departments issue non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses to eligible drivers who are legally present and authorized to work but do not have a permanent residence or domicile in that state.
The new rule, which took effect in March, limits non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses only to noncitizens with H-2A, H-2B and E2 visas.
Trump administration officials cite several fatal accidents involving noncitizen and immigrant truck drivers for the crackdown, including an August 2025 crash on Florida's Turnpike near Fort Pierce. Investigators say the crash that killed three people was caused after a truck driver from India made an illegal U-turn that blocked all lanes of traffic, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
"When illegal aliens are behind the wheels of semi-trucks, they are putting American lives in danger," Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Aug. 4 in announcing the results of the latest operation targeting immigrant truck drivers.
Fifty-one undocumented immigrants, including 21 drivers with non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses issued by California and New York, were detained during the operation carried out in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio, Homeland Security officials said. In addition, 766 "unsafe" drivers and vehicles were taken out of service, 86 drivers were arrested for dangerous behavior including road rage, and 36 drivers failed English proficiency tests, officials said.
In May, Border Patrol agents from the Yuma Sector arrested 52 people during a five-day operation, including 36 immigrant truck drivers with commercial driver's licenses, officials said. Most of the truck drivers had work permits issued during the Biden administration that were no longer valid, Border Patrol officials said. The operation was dubbed Operation Checkmate.
"Operation Checkmate reflects our commitment to safeguarding communities and roads from unlawfully present drivers who pose significant risks to public safety," the Yuma Sector's Acting Chief Patrol Agent Dustin Caudle said in a written statement.
The Trump administration's immigrant truck driver crackdown has drawn praise from the trucking industry, including the Arizona Trucking Association.
Foreign-born truck drivers have long been part of the trucking industry, but after the COVID-19 pandemic, when spending on consumer goods spiked, the industry experienced an influx of new trucking operators and truck drivers, many of them immigrants from other countries, said Tony Bradley, president and CEO of the Arizona Trucking Association.
During that time, the trucking industry also saw a rise in "bad actors" exploiting the system because of weak oversight of non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses issued by states to foreign nationals on temporary visas, Bradley said.
That led to a rise in immigrant truck drivers operating with non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses after their legal status and work permits had expired or who did not meet long-standing English proficiency standards, Bradley said.
"If you can't understand when" an electronic road sign "says to slow down, that becomes a real safety issue," Bradley said. "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."
The post-pandemic influx of trucking operators and truck drivers contributed to a "freight recession" because of an oversupply of trucking operators and drivers, Bradley said. As freight prices plummeted during the recession, some operators went out of business, while others "cut corners" to reduce costs, including hiring immigrant truckers willing to work for less pay, Bradley said.
"Part of what we're seeing with the foreign drivers is that many of them were probably exploited by these bad actors and hired by them," Bradley said. "We noticed that a lot of times they're from, you know, communities of similar backgrounds. And they're just in the United States looking for work to pay the bills, but are being exploited by these enterprises who had no intent of operating legally or safely."
But the crackdown is getting pushback from some immigrant truck drivers caught up in the sweeps who dispute claims that they pose a public safety threat and maintain they are operating with valid commercial driver's licenses tied to their valid work permits.
"They just want to show to the American people that voted for (President Donald) Trump that they're doing something. They just want the numbers. And I was just a number. They arrested me," said Navjot Singh, 26, a commercial truck driver from India who was stopped by the Border Patrol in May near Kingman and held in a detention center in Eloy for more than a month.
Singh said he was forced to abandon his refrigerated semitruck loaded with 40,000 pounds of frozen chicken worth more than $100,000 on the side of Interstate Highway 40 after he was taken into custody.
Immigrant truck drivers having to abandon their loads after being taken into custody during the crackdown has become a frequent occurrence on highways, said Josh Rosenthal, a workers' rights attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, a civil-rights organization.
"It's something that we've heard about both from drivers themselves, as well as their employers or their customers," Rosenthal said.
Immigrant truck drivers pulled over in Arizona and other states are hauling loads that either came from California or were on the way to California, Rosenthal said. The owner has to fly a new driver out to pick up the abandoned loads, Rosenthal said.
Some of the abandoned loads have included perishable produce from California's Central Valley, Rosenthal said.
What's more, there are a large number of Punjabi Sikh people from India in the trucking industry, Rosenthal said.
There is concern that they are easily profiled as part of the crackdown because, as part of their religious practices, they often wear turbans and do not cut their hair, Rosenthal said.
The crackdown has sparked a wave of harassment against Punjabi Sikh and Indian truck drivers, noted a legal brief filed in federal court by the Asian Law Caucus and a coalition of Sikh advocacy groups. The brief was filed in support of a lawsuit challenging the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's new restrictions on non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses.
"People have thrown objects like water bottles at Sikh trucks and have called Sikh drivers slurs ... forcing business owners to implement stricter security measures to protect their drivers," noted the brief.
Crackdown could take 200,000 truck drivers off the road
Critics allege that the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrant truck drivers is not rooted in public safety but rather is tied to the administration's broader mass deportation campaign and America First policies.
This is "just an immigration raid by any other name," said Cassandra Zimmer-Wong, an immigration policy analyst at More in Common, who wrote about the Trump administration's crackdown while at the Niskanen Center, another think tank.
The Trump administration's claim that the crackdown is aimed at improving public safety is based on high-profile anecdotes of fatal crashes involving immigrant truck drivers, Zimmer-Wong said.
But there is no hard evidence that immigrant truck drivers are less safe than American truck drivers, which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration acknowledged when it announced new rules blocking most immigrants with temporary work permits from obtaining non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses, Zimmer-Wong said.
The crackdown could take 200,000 immigrant truck drivers off the road, and possibly reignite longstanding shortages of truck drivers, Zimmer-Wong said.
The Trump administration is "manipulating a bureaucratic issue" to make it appear the immigrants are breaking the rules because the expiration dates of commercial driver's licenses and work permits often don't match, she said. Commercial driver's licenses are typically issued for four to eight years depending on the state, while work permits issued by the federal government are valid for one to two years before the immigrant must apply for a renewal.
That means your work permit could expire before your commercial driver's license expires, but that is not necessarily an indication that someone is in the country illegally, Zimmer-Wong said.
There are long delays in renewing work permits because of massive backlogs, stricter background vetting and the termination of automatic extensions under the Trump administration, according to the American Immigration Council.
"Do I think that these expiration dates should be standardized? One hundred percent. That feels like a clear fix to me. But I don't think the answer is taking 200,000 people off of the road when likely the vast majority of them are legally here," Zimmer-Wong said.
Dale Rogers, an Arizona State University professor of logistics and supply chain management, also rejects the Trump administration's claims that the crackdown is based on safety concerns.
"It's part of the overall Trump administration being cruel about immigration," Rogers said.
The crackdown is supported by the trucking industry because reducing the number of truck drivers on the road increases freight costs, which boosts profits, Rogers said. But that is bad for consumers because the costs of shipping goods go up, Rogers said.
What's more, Rogers said, immigrant truck drivers have helped fill labor gaps that have existed in the trucking industry for nearly two decades because growing numbers of Americans no longer want to work as truck drivers, particularly long-haul drivers, because of the long hours on the road away from home.
"It's not different than harvesting in the fields or working in landscaping or the other jobs that mostly Americans don't want to do," Rogers said. "We let our immigrants ... fill in the necessary holes."
Immigrant truck driver from India forced to abandon semi in Arizona
Singh, the commercial truck driver from India, said he was forced to abandon his 70-foot refrigerated semitruck loaded with 40,000 pounds of frozen chicken after he was stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol near Kingman, taken into custody and detained for a month in the Eloy Detention Center. The frozen chicken was mounted on 28 pallets and was worth between $100,000 and $150,000, Singh said.
Singh said the incident happened around 10:15 a.m. on May 15. He was transporting the load of frozen chicken from a processing plant in Lebanon, Indiana, to a warehouse in Victorville, California.
Singh was westbound on Interstate 40 when he noticed an unmarked Nissan SUV tailgating him near Exit 48. The vehicle followed close behind for about five miles. At Exit 44, the driver turned on police lights.
At first, Singh said he was afraid to pull over because it was an unmarked vehicle and "it could be anybody."
When he did, two people got out of the vehicle. They were wearing jeans, regular T-shirts and green vests. Singh said he believes the two officers were U.S. Border Patrol agents, which he thought was odd because Kingman is 250 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
One of the agents came up to his cab and asked, "Are you a U.S. citizen?"
"No, I am not," Singh responded in English.
"He told me specifically my English is pretty good," Singh said.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a written statement that Singh is an "illegal alien" from India who is in immigration proceedings.
Singh was apprehended after crossing the border in a failed smuggling attempt, the spokesperson said, adding that Singh has "never" been to the Eloy Detention Center and noted that a work permit or a pending asylum case does not confer legal status in this country.
A habeas petition filed in U.S. District Court of Arizona, however, verifies that Singh was held at the Eloy Detention Center.
Singh said he believes he was targeted by the Border Patrol agents because of his appearance.
He asked the Border Patrol agent if he pulled Singh over "because I'm brown."
The Border Patrol agent said, no, "but I know that was the only reason," Singh said.
Singh, who lives in Fresno, California, 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.
When Singh asked why, he said the Border Patrol agent told him his court date was a long way off and he was going to be given a new court date within 15 days to speed up his case.
"And there was nothing I could say that would have saved me, so I just complied," Singh said.
Singh said the Border Patrol agent declined his request to move the semitruck to a safer spot.
"He said, 'No, don't worry about it. Just leave it over there,'" Singh said. "And it was on the side of the shoulder. And that was a dangerous spot. It was on a downhill."
The Border Patrol agent did allow Singh to call the owner of the truck, who was on the East Coast at the time, to ask him if he could retrieve the truck. But the owner said he couldn't get to Arizona for four or five days.
Fortunately, Singh said, he had just refueled the refrigerated truck, "so that was the only reason we got saved because if the reefer's fuel would be low, the whole load would be ruined."
Singh said the Border Patrol agent told him to leave the keys in the truck's battery compartment. But Singh worried that the truck could get stolen.
The Border Patrol agents took him to a temporary setup in the desert and then to a Border Patrol processing center in Yuma, where Singh said he was held for five days in a cold cell with no blankets. He was asked to sign a document allowing officers to search his phone, Singh said.
After five days, Singh said he was transferred to the Eloy Detention Center, about 60 miles south of Phoenix.
At the Eloy Detention Center, Singh said he met between 50 and 60 other immigrant truck drivers who also had been detained while traveling through Arizona. The other truck drivers were from India, Turkey, Russia and Mexico, he said.
Singh said he was held in the Eloy Detention Center for 34 days. He said he was ordered to be released by an immigration judge after a lawyer filed a habeas petition.
Singh said his family fled India in 2016 when he was 16 because of death threats tied to his father's political affiliation. After living in multiple countries in Europe, Singh came to the United States in 2023 to seek asylum. He said he crossed the border without authorization from Mexico in a spot near Yuma.
After applying for asylum, Singh said he received a work permit. With the work permit, he was to apply for a non-domiciled commercial driver's license. He received his CDL in California in December 2024 after completing a commercial truck driving school, Singh said.
After he was released from Eloy Detention Center, Singh returned to Fresno. Although his commercial driver's license is still valid, he said he can no longer drive because he is required to wear a GPS monitoring device on his ankle and he can't travel more than 75 miles from his home.
Singh believes federal immigration authorities are arresting immigrant truck drivers on U.S. highways partly for political show.
He was shocked to see a photo of his commercial driver's license posted on the Instagram account of the Yuma Sector's Chief Patrol Agent along with photos of other immigrant truck drivers arrested during an operation in May. The post, which plays to a clip of the Johnny Cash song, "I've Been Everywhere," appears to mock the immigrant truck drivers.
Between 2000 and 2021, the number of foreign-born truck drivers more than doubled from 316,000 to 720,000, according to the National Immigration Forum. About 18% of all truckers are foreign born, according to the forum.
Many of the immigrant truck drivers swept up in the crackdown are Punjabi Sikhs from India, said Raman Dhillon, CEO of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association.
Dhillon said he's all for removing truck drivers who don't know English or don't have valid commercial driver's licenses from the roads to protect public safety.
"I don't want somebody traveling right next to my family with no knowledge" of what a warning sign says and doesn't know to "push the brakes while my family is stopped on the freeway. I don't want them on the road. Doesn't matter it's an Indian or whoever it is," Dhillon said.
But the fact that immigrant truck drivers with valid commercial driver's licenses are getting swept up indicates that the crackdown is not just about safety.
"This is just ridiculous what they are doing," Dhillon said. "The person is driving on a road with a valid driver license and valid work permit and is being picked up saying that you're illegal and you're unlicensed. That is wrong."
He noted that in some states, federal immigration agents are stationed alongside state troopers at commercial truck weigh stations and are pulling immigrant truck drivers with non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses off the road.
"I think this is easier to catch people when they're in the truck, they're by themselves, they're driving, they are on the scales, they're scared," Dhillon said.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why is the Border Patrol detaining immigrant truckers in Arizona? | Exclusive
