The Patriot Post® · Making Trucking Great Again

An increasing number of deadly traffic accidents have been directly tied to immigrant truck drivers, some of them here in the country illegally. In 2025 alone, 30 people were killed in 17 truck-related crashes in which the driver of the truck was a foreign driver who did not qualify for a commercial driver’s license (CDL).

According to the American Trucking Associations, there are about 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the U.S., of which roughly 18% are immigrants. And this number has grown significantly. In 2000, there were around 315,000 foreign-born truck drivers on the road. By 2021, that had ballooned to more than 720,000.

More immigrant truck drivers are not necessarily a problem if they are fully qualified to meet the demands of professional big-rig driving. However, the rising number of fatal incidents over the last few years has exposed the reality that many of these immigrant drivers have no business sitting behind the wheel — especially those without legal status to be in the country in the first place.

One of the problems the Trump administration uncovered is that many immigrant drivers don’t read or speak English. As a result, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in April mandating new restrictions on CDLs, including a requirement that commercial truck drivers be able to speak English.

The administration has further cracked down on illegal alien truck drivers, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) posting agents at truck weigh stations across the country, in an effort to get an estimated 200,000 illegal alien truck drivers off the road. Thus far, ICE officials have removed some 28,000 illegal alien truck drivers.

However, the effort to police the roadways and remove illegal alien truckers has been disjointed. As border czar Tom Homan explained, “The problem is we’re working very well with red states. Blue states are still a struggle, right? Places like New York. I mean, ICE and [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] can’t even get access to the DMV database to run the checks.”

But President Trump’s approach to solving the problem is not just stricter requirements and greater enforcement; he is also encouraging more Americans to enter the trucking industry, especially U.S. military veterans.

At a Defense and Innovation Summit in Pennsylvania last week, Trump revealed the basics of his positive trucking plan:

We’re going to replace [illegal aliens] with proud American veterans. We’re going to take our veterans, and we’re going to make them — we’re going to teach them a lot about driving trucks, and in many cases, they know.

We’re going to say any American who has driven a heavy truck for the military will automatically be eligible for a commercial driver’s license.

The exact details of the program have yet to be revealed, but the concept is a good one. As of 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that roughly one in 10 commercial truck drivers is a veteran.

While several states offer incentives to veterans to become professional truck drivers, including recognizing their military operation of heavy trucks or similar vehicles as qualifying for a CDL, there is no national program favoring veterans.

Trump aims to change this, to encourage greater employment opportunities for American veterans, with added recognition that their military service and training make them significantly more qualified and trustworthy for commercial truck driving across this great nation.

More employment opportunities in the U.S. that favor Americans are a good thing. Indeed, this is the way it should always be. Companies hiring foreign workers should be the exception, not the norm. And if there is anything Americans are naturally quite proficient at, it’s driving.