Trump Order removed to remove truck drivers who do not speak enough English, which was officially made by DOT

Although he spoke English when he was enrolled in a truck driver training program, Kevinson Jean, a Haitian immigrant, remembered himself confident during his commercial driving license test.

“Sometimes I was afraid to pronounce something wrong,” said Jean, who covers around 100,000 miles a year as a trucker. “I didn't want people to cover me.”

He remembered classmates from Iran, who spoke no English fluently, but still passed their exams. “Nobody could understand them, but they have passed,” he said.

You and other truck drivers are now subject to the English competence tests on the roadside. On Tuesday, the transport secretary Sean Duffy officially signed a guideline for his department to take truck drivers off the street if they do not speak English fluently. The guideline puts an executive regulation signed by President Donald Trump on April 28th.

Trump's command changes the punishment for violations of the law, which has given a person as a qualification for decades, “to read and speak the English language sufficiently in order to talk to the general public, to understand signs of highway and signals in the English language and to answer official inquiries and to make entries for reports and records.”

The Obama government had relaxed the punishment to bring the drivers from the street to a quote.

“We give instructions that ensure that a driver who cannot understand English will not drive a vehicle in this country. The period,” said Duffy in a press conference in Austin, Texas, the state with the highest number of heavy truck and tractor tractor truck drivers.

The reversal of the punishment has supported industrial organizations that say that it will improve the security of the highway. But there is also opposition from drivers and the industry that have explained that the risk of change exceeds a significant part of the workforce without tackling the nuclear industrial problems such as wage, hourly and trucker training. In a letter to Duffy on April 10, the association called its No. 2. Schools that were the fast-track training for commercial driver licenses, the main concern of the group.

Duffy said his department will check security procedures for the allocation of commercial driver licenses that vary the state, and also the justification of “non -domed” domestic and international trucks – those who are not residents of the state in which they have their trade driver's license.

“Mis -led guidelines have prioritized the political correctness of the security of the American people for too long,” said Duffy.

Questions about enforcement

The change has taken care of the concerns among drivers of the Sikh and the Punjabi background, said Mannirmal Kur, Senior Federal Federal Policy Manager for the Sikh Coalition. She said it was an increase in Sikh and Punjab drivers from 2016 to 2018, and there are about 150,000 drivers of this background in the industry.

Like other drivers, they want for all safe streets, said Kur. But “we believe that there is a potential for discrimination on how these requirements of English skills are forced by the English language.”

Trump's executive command raises questions about how state and local law enforcement officers decide as inspectors who they should outperform for an English competence test.

“Is it someone who has an accent or maybe someone who wears a turban?” Asked Kur. “Unemployment for the truck driver can be out of extraordinary service … with possibly limited recourse.”

The group is waiting for further details about training and recommended that it will be standardized to test the language skills.

An analysis of the data from the Ministry of Transport by the women of the Trucking Advisory Board to the security of the federal government's security administration estimates that around 3.8% of the CDL workforce are limited in English.

The industry has experienced an increase in the drivers born abroad over the years, but according to the analysis of the board, the drivers are still predominantly white and male.

The number of large truck accidents and the resulting deaths and injuries fell back in 2024 compared to 2023 and has been on a slide since 2021.

For intelligence, which provides the freight industry economic forecasts, reported that FMCSA recorded violations of the English skills in English in the two years in March around 15,200, not all of the same drivers. Texas had the largest percentage of violations with 16%, but truck with Mexican plates was 3.4% of the total number.

Jean said he expects the changed punishment to prevent people from being able to have trained as a truck driver.

“It is difficult to get a job if you don't have at least a year of experience,” he said. “Now imagine that they also lend English liquids. It will take people much more time to find work.”