President Donald Trump’s administration announced the results of a crackdown on illegal immigration in the trucking industry Tuesday.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) began the crackdown, Operation Highway Shield, in Florida earlier this year. The DOT has since expanded the effort to multiple states in the Midwest, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio, Fox News has learned.
Officials carried out 3,487 enforcement stops during the operation that resulted in 766 unsafe commercial vehicles or drivers placed out of service, 51 immigration detentions, 47 criminal charges filed, 39 incarcerations, 36 English language proficiency (ELP) violations and three cargo theft recoveries totaling roughly $1 million in stolen freight.
The Trump administration maintains that federal immigration and commercial driving enforcement remains a top priority.
Fox News previously broke news about the ramped-up enforcement efforts in Florida in March. Florida troopers said up to half of truckers at some weigh stations cannot meet English proficiency requirements.
“I try to concentrate on the [signs] they have to read,” Master Trooper Craig Lents said at the time. “If you are going down the road at 70 miles per hour, and you see that sign, you only see it for a split second.”
In another encounter caught on video, a trooper asked a trucker what a road sign meant.
The trucker replied, “No.”
The trooper then asked what drivers should do if they saw the sign, to which the trucker replied, “No,” again.
The Trump administration has noted that federal English requirements have been on the books for years.
“It’s been the law for a long period of time,” said Derek Barrs, Federal Motor Carrier Safety administrator. “It’s a safety issue. … If there was a crash or something like that, I would want to make sure that driver would know how to respond — slow down for upcoming traffic or a crash that has happened up ahead.”
Authorities explained that being unable to speak or read English is dangerous because truckers are driving by important road signs at high speeds while carrying hundreds of tons.
The enforcement push comes after a string of deadly crashes nationwide involving drivers the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims were in the U.S. illegally or operating with commercial drivers’ licenses (CDLs) they should never have had.
