After Fatal Florida Turnpike Crash, State Department Pauses Work Visas for Truck Drivers

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on August 21, 2025, that the State Department was immediately pausing work visas for commercial truck drivers.

"The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers," Rubio said in a post on X.

A department spokesperson told Overdrive the pause applied "to all nationalities," covered applicants seeking to drive commercial trucks under the H-2B, E-2 and EB-3 visa classifications, and was meant to allow "a comprehensive and thorough review of screening and vetting protocols."

The crash behind it

The announcement followed an August 12 crash on Florida's Turnpike in which a tractor-trailer driver allegedly made an illegal U-turn, causing a wreck that killed three people, CNN reported. The driver, 28-year-old Harjinder Singh, held a California commercial driver's license, according to Florida's highway safety department. Federal authorities alleged he had entered the United States illegally.

U.S. marshals arrested Singh in California on August 16 on a Florida warrant charging him with three counts of vehicular homicide. He was extradited to Florida on August 21. His public defender in California said he had signed paperwork acknowledging he was the person Florida sought but "did not in any way admit to any criminal charges."

The Transportation Department said Singh failed an English-proficiency assessment when federal investigators interviewed him, "providing correct responses to just two of 12 verbal questions and only accurately identifying one of four highway traffic signs." DOT said California had issued him a limited-term, non-domiciled CDL in July 2024 and that it was investigating whether the state violated federal rules. The California DMV said it "followed all federal and state laws" and that the federal government had confirmed Singh's legal presence.

Limited reach

The visa pause would not have applied to Singh, who did not enter on a visa, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Overdrive reported. Overdrive found just over 100 H-2B certifications for "commercial truck drivers" in three months of Labor Department data, compared with more than 60,000 non-domiciled CDLs it identified in a review of state practices. The pause also did not halt B-1 border-crossing cards or stop states from issuing non-domiciled CDLs.

ATA President Chris Spear said non-domiciled CDLs need "serious scrutiny," adding, "At a minimum, we need better accounting of how many non-domiciled CDLs are being issued." An ATA spokesperson told CNN the pause appeared to apply "to a very small population relative to the overall driver workforce."

What it means for drivers and fleets

For most carriers, the visa pause itself changed little, because few truck drivers come in on those visas. The bigger signal was the federal focus on how states license foreign drivers and on English proficiency, which had become an out-of-service violation earlier in the summer. Fleets that hire drivers with non-domiciled CDLs had reason to verify their credentials and language skills, and to expect closer scrutiny at roadside inspections.