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The Department of Transportation wants tougher rules for commercial truck drivers after a deadly crash in Florida involving a trucker who was born in India. The Trump administration argues the move is needed for safety. Critics say it appears to be an extension of the administration's crackdown on immigration. NPR's Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: If the Trump administration's crackdown on truckers had a face, it would be Harjinder Singh. He was driving an 18-wheeler in Fort Pierce, Florida, in August, when he allegedly made an illegal U-turn, causing a crash that killed three people.
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UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #1: All right. An illegal migrant has now been charged after his truck jackknifed a minivan while making an illegal U-turn.
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #2: Causing a horrific crash, killing three Americans.
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #3: Authorities have arrested and charged Singh with vehicular homicide.
ROSE: Singh, who was born in India, has pleaded not guilty. The Department of Homeland Security says he was in the country illegally, though California officials say he had a valid work permit. What's clear is that Singh's case has been a huge story on conservative TV news, prompting quick action from the Trump administration.
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SEAN DUFFY: We have people on the roads that aren't safe, that aren't qualified, that should never have a driver's license. And lives were lost.
ROSE: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says there are too many foreign-born truckers who don't know the rules of the road and don't speak English. Within weeks, Duffy announced new regulations that would make it much harder for immigrants, even legal ones, to get commercial driver's licenses.
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DUFFY: The process for issuing these licenses is absolutely 100% broken. It has become a threat to public safety, and it is a national emergency that requires action right now.
ROSE: The Trump administration's crackdown is putting immigrant truckers in a difficult spot, particularly those who've been in the business for a while. On the one hand, they say some of the safety problems Duffy is highlighting are real, but they argue that targeting foreign-born drivers is not the right way to fix them.
PAWAN SINGH: Oil is being changed on this truck and...
ROSE: Pawan Singh (ph) - no relation to Harjinder Singh - owns a small trucking company in Northern Virginia. He shows me around the maintenance garage, where a few cabs are in for service. Singh started this business while he was still a senior in college 16 years ago, and he's quick to admit that the industry does have a safety problem.
SINGH: The safety crackdown has been long overdue.
ROSE: Singh says there are drivers on the road who are not qualified, who pass through schools that help them get commercial driver's licenses fast without really giving them the skills to operate an 18-wheeler safely. But Singh says that's not just a problem for immigrants.
SINGH: Look, an untrained driver is dangerous, whether they were born here or they were born overseas. Some of the schools that are just using rubber stamps to issue these driver's licenses - there should definitely be a crackdown there.
ROSE: But instead of focusing on that problem, Singh is worried that the Trump administration is scapegoating immigrants. In particular, Sikhs, like himself, and Harjinder Singh, the driver in the fatal Florida crash. Like other immigrants from the Punjab region of India, they have a big presence in the North American trucking industry, and Singh says Sikhs are easy to spot because they wear turbans and long beards.
SINGH: When we're out on the road, we're likely to stick out like a sore thumb. Although there might be other drivers making those mistakes, but when a minority community makes the same mistakes, it becomes a stereotype.
ROSE: A stereotype that is not supported by the data. In fact, the Trump administration's critics say there's no evidence that foreign-born truckers are any more dangerous than their native-born counterparts.
CASSANDRA ZIMMER-WONG: It just feels like this is an immigration raid by another name.
ROSE: Cassandra Zimmer-Wong is an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that supports free markets. She says the Trump administration's rule would sharply limit which immigrants can qualify for commercial driver's licenses, effectively pushing as many as 200,000 immigrant truckers out of the workforce. Already, California has said it will revoke 17,000 commercial driver's licenses that don't comply with state law. But Zimmer-Wong says there's no clear benefit to safety, since the Department of Transportation says it's found no evidence of a connection between a trucker's country of origin and their driving record.
ZIMMER-WONG: When I looked at the new rule, it just feels very clear that the intention was to get immigrant drivers out of work, and it wasn't necessarily about safety.
ROSE: A panel of judges from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had its own concerns about the emergency rule, blocking it temporarily while the court considers a legal challenge, but the Trump administration is still pushing to make the rule permanent.
Joel Rose, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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