California will lose $160 million because of delays in revoking 17,000 commercial driver licenses for immigrants, federal transportation officials announced Wednesday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had already withheld $40 million in federal funding because he said California was not enforcing English proficiency requirements for truck drivers. The state notified these drivers in the fall that they would lose their licenses because a federal audit found problems that included licenses for truck drivers and bus drivers that remained valid long after an immigrant’s visa expired. Some licenses were also granted to citizens of Mexico and Canada who did not qualify. Of the small sample of California licenses that investigators reviewed, more than one-quarter were illegal. But then last week California said it would delay those cancellations until March after immigrant groups sued the state over concerns that certain groups were being unfairly targeted. Duffy said the state should have revoked those licenses by Monday. Duffy is pressuring California and other states to ensure that immigrants living in the country illegally are not granted licenses. “Our demands were simple: follow the rules, revoke licenses issued illegally to dangerous foreign drivers and fix the system so this never happens again,” Duffy said in a written statement. “(Gov.) Gavin Newsom has failed to do that – he has put the needs of illegal immigrants above the safety of the American people.” Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to the announcement of the action Wednesday afternoon. Enforcement stepped up after fatal crashes The federal government began cracking down over the summer. The issue became prominent when a truck driver, who was not authorized to reside in the US, took an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people in August. Duffy had previously threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New York, Texas, South Dakota, Colorado and Washington after the audit found significant problems under existing rules, including allowing commercial licenses to remain valid long after an immigrant truck driver’s work permit expired. He dropped a threat to withhold about $160 million from California after the state said it would revoke the licenses. Derek Bars, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, said California failed to meet its promise in November to cancel all errant licenses by Jan. 5. The agency said the state made a unilateral decision to delay until March the revocation of approximately 4,700 additional illegal licenses that were found after the initial licenses were seized. “We will not accept a reform plan that knowingly leaves thousands of drivers with non-compliant licenses behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks in flagrant disregard for federal safety regulations,” Baars said. Industry praises enforcement Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers off the road who shouldn’t have a license or who can’t speak English. He also appreciated the move of the transport department to take action against dubious commercial driver’s license schools. “For too long, flaws in this program have allowed unqualified drivers on our highways, putting professional truck drivers and the motoring public at risk,” said Todd Spencer, president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association. Sikh truck drivers are in the spotlight because the driver in the Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash in California in October are both Sikhs. So the Sikh Coalition, a national group defending the civil rights of Sikhs, and the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the California drivers. He said immigrant truck drivers are being unfairly targeted. About 20% of all truck drivers are immigrants, but these non-domiciled licensed immigrants only account for 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses, or about 200,000 drivers. The Department of Transportation also proposed new restrictions that would severely limit the extent to which noncitizens can obtain licenses, but a court blocked the new rules.