{"id":15091,"date":"2025-12-23T16:52:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T23:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-faces-24m-federal-funding-cut-over-illegal-commercial-drivers-licenses\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:45:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:45:20","slug":"colorado-faces-24m-federal-funding-cut-over-illegal-commercial-drivers-licenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-faces-24m-federal-funding-cut-over-illegal-commercial-drivers-licenses\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado faces $24M federal funding cut over illegal commercial driver\u2019s licenses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Big
Big rigs stack up at the Flying J Truck Stop along Interstate 70 near the small Colorado plains community of Limon on May 21, 2009. (David Zalubowski\/Associated Press file)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 The head of the U.S. Department of Transportation threatened Monday to withhold $24 million in federal funding from the state of Colorado for what he described as a slow response to a major violation of federal commercial driver\u2019s license regulations. <\/a><\/p>\n

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pointed to a nationwide audit conducted in October that found about 22% of the commercial licenses doled out by Colorado to immigrants were done so illegally, many to Mexican nationals \u2013 a practice that\u2019s prohibited under federal law.<\/p>\n

Duffy accused Colorado of \u201cslow walking\u201d the required purge of these licenses. He said the state has failed to complete a full audit, provide a complete accounting of affected drivers, or revoke the invalid credentials despite being notified of non-compliance.<\/p>\n

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called it a case of \u201ccrossed-wires,\u201d saying that if Duffy had reached out, he would know that the state has \u201cfinished the investigation and we are conducting a final review of the findings, with letters likely going out this week to CDL holders whose credentials were improperly issued.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said in a statement that the state is working quickly to revoke these licenses.<\/p>\n

In addition to Duffy\u2019s ultimatum, he also noted that the Transportation Department has the authority to decertify Colorado\u2019s entire CDL program if the state doesn\u2019t act swiftly.<\/p>\n

\"Transportation
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy speaks during a news conference Dec. 12 at the Department of Transportation in Washington. (Mark Schiefelbein\/Associated Press file)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cEvery day that goes by is another day unqualified, unvetted foreign truckers are jeopardizing the safety of you and your family,\u201d Duffy said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Polis, a two-term Democrat, has been at odds with the Trump administration in recent months. Tensions flared as recently as this past weekend when the Trump administration denied disaster declaration requests<\/a> following wildfires and flooding earlier this year. Last week, Polis also criticized the administration\u2019s plans to dismantle a federal climate research lab<\/a> located in the state.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Division of Motor Vehicles has paused the issuance and renewal of term-limited non-domiciled CDLs and commercial learner\u2019s permits indefinitely, The Denver Post<\/em> reported<\/a> last week. That pause is expected to remain in place pending an audit of all such licenses to ensure compliance with federal regulations.<\/p>\n

Duffy has threatened federal highway funding for other states, too, in his effort to make sure truck drivers and bus drivers are qualified to either haul passengers or 80,000 pounds of cargo down the highway.<\/p>\n

New York was the fourth state run by a Democratic governor to be called out publicly earlier this month. Questions also have been raised about similar practices in California<\/a>, Pennsylvania<\/a> and Minnesota.<\/p>\n

Letters also have gone out from the agency to Republican-run Texas and South Dakota.<\/p>\n

Duffy launched the review this summer, but it became more prominent after officials reported that a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people<\/a> in August.<\/p>\n

The rules on these licenses the Transportation Department is enforcing have been in place for years. According to the federal audit, it was discovered that in some instances states may not have even checked a driver\u2019s immigration status before issuing a license.<\/p>\n

Since Duffy began pressing the issue in California, that state has revoked<\/a> some 21,000 commercial driver\u2019s licenses that were issued improperly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transportation secretary accuses state of \u2018slow walking\u2019 required purge of invalid credentials<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15091"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19415,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15091\/revisions\/19415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15091"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}