“What New York does is if an applicant comes in and they have a work authorization — for 30 days, 60 days, one year — New York automatically issues them an eight-year commercial driver’s license,” Duffy said during a press conference at DOT headquarters in DC Friday. “That’s contrary to the law.”
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“But we also found that New York many times won’t even verify whether they have a work authorization, they have a visa, or they’re in the country legally,” he added.
“So they’re just giving eight-year commercial driver’s licenses to people who are coming through their DMV and sending them out on American roadways — and again they’re endangering the lives of American families.”
Duffy issued the warning after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reviewed all non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) issued by the New York Department of Motor Vehicles and found a 53% failure rate of its roughly 32,000 CDLs.
The Post revealed in September that one migrant applicant didn’t even have to put a first name down to receive the driver’s license.
DOT officials also launched a probe Thursday into whether a Chinese national accused of causing a fatal pileup on a Tennessee highway this week was illegally issued a New York State driver’s license.
The transportation secretary is giving Hochul and her officials 30 days to revoke all the illegal CDLs, pause any new licenses or learner’s permits from being issued and conduct their own comprehensive audit — or have their federal funding pulled.
“What we uncovered in New York is not an administrative oversight,” added FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs at the presser.
“It’s a systematically, grossly unacceptable deviation from a federal safety regulation that has been on the books for a long period of time.”
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NYS DMV spokesperson Walter McClure responded in a statement: “Secretary Duffy is lying about New York State once again in a desperate attempt to distract from the failing, chaotic administration he represents.”
“Here is the truth: Commercial Drivers Licenses are regulated by the Federal Government, and New York State DMV has, and will continue to, comply with federal rules. Every CDL we issue is subject to verification of an applicant’s lawful status through federally-issued documents reviewed in accordance with federal regulations. This is just another stunt from Secretary Duffy, and it does nothing to keep our roads safer. We will review USDOT’s letter and respond accordingly.”
Around half of all CDLs nationwide are issued either in New York or California, the officials noted, before calling on both states to revoke the unlawfully issued licenses.
In the Golden State, Duffy said 25% of CDLs were unlawfully issued and the state responded by revoking at least 17,000.
The FMCSA audit sampled 200 CDL records, of which 107 were unlawfully issued, the US Department of Transportation revealed in a press release.
At present, the New York DMV appears to have “defaulted to issuing 8-year licenses to foreign drivers for non-REAL ID licenses, regardless of when their legal status expired,” the release noted.