Add The California Post on Google Close to one dozen California commercial driving schools have been shut down by the Trump administration after the feds claimed there was an alarming lack of English proficiency among drivers.
The 11 schools are located across the state — including in SoCal, the Bay Area and the Central Valley — according to documents shared with The California Post.
The driving schools were all closed due to failures associated with more than 5,000 drivers who failed English language proficiency tests across the nation.
Several of the driving schools reviewed by The California Post were marketed as multilingual, with at least two schools promising instructors who spoke “English, Punjabi, Hindi & Spanish!”
California had the second-most schools closed due to English proficiency failures of any state behind Pennsylvania and Texas, which tied for first with 13 each, according to the Department of Transportation.
DOT Secretary Sean Duffy held a press conference Monday, saying he was issuing an emergency order to close the 110 schools, plus suspending another 160 schools for failing to meet training facility standards.
“If you’re here illegally and you can’t speak the language and you’re not well-trained, you don’t deserve to be in a big rig, driving American roads, endangering American citizens,” Duffy said at a press conference in Detroit alongside Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and federal prosecutors.
“You have to speak English to operate a commercial vehicle. I didn’t create that rule. President Trump didn’t create that rule. That rule has been in place for decades, and we have schools that know the rule and still pass people through their school who can’t speak the language,” Duffy continued.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called California the “worst abusers” of CDLs.
“By far, the worst abusers are in California under [Gov.] Gavin Newsom’s leadership,” he said. “It doesn’t just affect California. It affects our entire country.”
He also said “almost every one” of the illegal immigrant drivers involved in deadly and near-fatal incidents was “given their CDLs in sanctuary cities.”
Partap Singh, an illegal alien from India who had obtained a California commercial driver’s license, drove an 18-wheel tractor-trailer that smashed into a car with 7-year-old Dalilah Coleman and her father in it in 2024.
Coleman was left permanently disabled from the crash.
When asked for comment, the DOT pointed The Post to a recent Midwest operation that detained more than 4 dozen illegal immigrant truck drivers. About 41% of the drivers detained received their CDLs from either California or New York.
