Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has requested records from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators that would help the Department of Transportation identify bus drivers who are in the country illegally, obtained their credentials fraudulently, or both. The American Federation of Teachers, led by Randi Weingarten, has joined a lawsuit with 21 blue states and Washington, D.C. to block the request.
The DOT is seeking five years of records: drivers’ names, dates of birth, CDL numbers, states of licensure, and the last five digits of Social Security numbers. The information is hardly sensitive, and the notion that Social Security numbers should be hidden from the same government that issued them is absurd on its face.
Weingarten claims concern for driver privacy. But the data could expose CDL holders who obtained their credentials under false pretenses, and that appears to be the real worry.
Federal regulations prohibit illegal immigrants from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, with only narrow exceptions for certain lawful non-citizen residents. But lax oversight during the Biden administration allowed CDL mills to flourish. These sham operations credential drivers with little to no training. CDL holders are supposed to communicate in English, yet some mills have licensed drivers who cannot even read road signs.
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The consequences have been deadly. Three people lost their lives when Harjinder Singh, an illegal immigrant, made an illegal U-turn in a semi-truck on the Florida Turnpike. Singh could not communicate with officers in English. He failed the Florida CDL knowledge exam 10 times before California granted him a license anyway. Additional fatal crashes in Indiana, California, and Ohio have all been caused by illegal immigrants holding CDLs.
The AFT represents 13,500 transportation workers and estimates that 11,000 of them hold commercial driver’s licenses. The union appears willing to gamble with student safety rather than risk losing a single dues-paying member, even if that member has no business transporting children.
More than 4,000 school districts across the country outsource their transportation to third-party vendors. District officials in these cases are simply taking a contracted company’s word that each driver is qualified. When districts hire drivers directly, officials must verify credentials themselves, though thoroughness varies widely.
This is not the first time teacher union leadership has put its own interests ahead of student safety. The Defense of Freedom Institute has documented how unions have pressured school districts into keeping sexual abusers on payrolls and adopting “restorative practices” that allow classrooms to descend into chaos and sometimes violence.
This article originally appeared on American Faith and is reposted with permission.
