A sickening recent crash of a motorcoach bus in Stafford County, Virginia, resulted in the death of five people, and if the United States had sane immigration laws, it never would have happened. The driver, Jing Shen Dong, was a Chinese man who was naturalized as an American citizen yet could not speak English. The Democrat-controlled state of New York issued his commercial driver’s license (CDL) in 2024. This is just the most recent instance of an ongoing phenomenon — immigrant drivers or truckers getting CDLs with little scrutiny and going on to cause deaths on U.S. highways. According to the Department of Transportation (DOT), non-domiciled truckers killed at least 30 people in 2025 in 17 fatal crashes.
It is horrifying that Americans have to worry about whether their families may be killed on the interstate by a foreign trucker who was issued a CDL with insufficient scrutiny by a corrupt or incompetent state government. Not to mention, issuing CDLs to illegal aliens is against federal law.
The motorcoach crash in Virginia highlights the problem not just with illegal immigration, but with legal immigration and the naturalization process. How was such a man lawfully naturalized as a U.S. citizen when he could not speak English? United States law requires those under the age of 50 to speak English to be naturalized as a citizen, and that ought to be the bare minimum for everyone, with no age exception.
Stopping and reversing the illegal migration of millions of people into America is the most urgent demand of the day, but scrutinizing, reducing, and reversing even legal migration is almost as important. It is encouraging that President Trump has been using regulatory hurdles and discretion to reduce legal immigration into the United States. For decades, leftists— and even many conservatives — have told us that legal immigration is about the “best and brightest” coming to America, the land of opportunity. Yet the reality looks much more like Americans ending up dead in part because our government has “naturalized” people who never should have been eligible for citizenship.
Trucking as a key front of the immigration battle has even reached the Supreme Court in several recent decisions, although the results have been mixed. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, as recently reported by Danielle Chaffin in these pages, the court unanimously ruled that freight brokers can be held legally responsible if they hire truckers from companies with a record of unsafe drivers. This means freight brokers are legally incentivized to perform greater scrutiny when hiring trucking companies and not cut corners to save costs. Any step that increases scrutiny for hiring truckers is a good one at this point, and freight brokers should be required to perform their due diligence — especially if that means the difference between life and death for unsuspecting victims on the interstate.
The other recent Supreme Court ruling on trucking — Florida v. California — proved disappointing. The state of Florida sued California and Washington for those blue states’ lax issuance of CDLs to illegal alien truckers, resulting in the deaths of Florida residents on the interstate, such as the crash caused by Harjinder Singh on August 12, 2025. The Supreme Court issued no opinion but released an order dismissing the case.
Notably, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, indicating they wanted to hear the case. As Justice Thomas wrote: “An illegal alien who cannot read English road signs cannot drive an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer. Federal law and regulations prohibit States from providing commercial driver’s licenses to applicants unless they pass a driver’s test, sufficiently understand the English language, and show appropriate immigration status.” Thus, Florida had legitimate grievance to sue California and Washington over these states’ failure to comply with federal laws.
Thomas expressed frustration that SCOTUS “declines to even hear Florida’s claims, even though it has nowhere else to bring them.” As Thomas argued, a suit between states is one of the few kinds of cases over which the Supreme Court possesses original (as opposed to appellate) jurisdiction, and Thomas doubted whether “this Court has discretion to refuse to hear cases within its exclusive original jurisdiction.”
State governments ought to protect their citizens, and if Florida cannot sue other states whose negligence or corruption is wreaking havoc in Florida, then what legal recourse do states like Florida have? Must responsible states be doomed to reap the consequences of other states’ negligence, even when it results in deaths on their highways?
Even as SCOTUS gives ambiguous signals, the Trump administration has relentlessly been moving on this issue. On April 28, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order in which he instructed the Department of Transportation and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to enforce the English-proficiency requirement for truckers and investigate and curtail the issuance of CDLs to non-domiciled aliens. Under Secretary Sean Duffy, DOT has rolled out several new regulations to close loopholes and mandate that states verify eligibility of foreign drivers.
Further, the DOT has begun to audit systematic non-compliance in multiple states, including New York, California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Colorado. State non-compliance can result in withholding of federal highway funds. It should not be controversial that every step possible should be taken to put legal pressure on the state governments to force their compliance with these commonsense regulations.
Also, under President Trump, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has overhauled and tightened the requirements for naturalization, such as more rigorously scrutinizing the character and English language competency of immigrants seeking naturalization. Significantly, this has resulted in a drop in naturalizations over recent months.
Trucking is a key front of the immigration battle since it intimately touches the lives of most Americans. All Americans are at risk if unsafe truckers and bus drivers are permitted on the highways, and the death toll is already far too high. Ultimately, the goal should be legal and regulatory reform.
Only native-born or fully naturalized U.S. citizens should be permitted to obtain CDLs. Since justice requires we prosecute those responsible as severely as possible, criminal or civil cases should be brought against state officials for their complicity in these actions that have resulted in deaths of Americans on the highways.
The reforms that President Trump, Duffy, and the rest of the administration have undertaken are long overdue and urgently needed. If we are to save America and curb the problems of legal and illegal immigration, we cannot neglect our highways.
