The Department of State is putting the brakes on all employment visas for foreign-born drivers of commercial trucks amid an investigation into a deadly crash in Florida involving a driver from India earlier this month.

“Effective immediately, we are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers,” Secretary Marco Rubio said in a post on X. “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.”

The new edict comes as the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, has been making efforts to enforce standards of English language proficiency. In May, he signed an order on the enforcement of the new language requirements for truckers, as well as an audit of states that provide non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses to non-U.S. citizens.

“The open borders policies of the last administration allowed millions to flood our country — leading to serious allegations that the trucking licensing system is being exploited,” Mr. Duffy said in a statement released in June. “Our audit is about protecting the safety of families on the road and upholding the integrity of CDLs held by America’s truckers.”

The industry appears to be siding with Mr. Duffy’s efforts with the American Trucking Association, claiming that they were the ones who called for the audit.

“At a minimum, we need better accounting of how many non-domiciled CDLs are being issued, which is why we applaud Transportation Secretary Duffy for launching a nationwide audit in June upon our request,” ATA’s president and CEO, Chris Spear, said in a statement.

Earlier this week, the DOT launched an investigation into an August 12 crash in Florida in which three people were killed when a truck driver named Harjinder Singh made an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike through an access point that had an “official use only” sign displayed prominently.

Their investigation disclosed that Mr. Singh, an Indian national, had failed his English language proficiency assessment, correctly answering only two of the 12 verbal questions and identifying one highway sign correctly during an on-site compliance investigation by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Mr. Singh had received a full-term commercial driver’s license from the state of Washington in 2023 despite not being eligible. He then obtained a limited-term non-domiciled commercial license the following year in California.

“Three innocent people were killed in Florida because Gavin Newsom’s California Department of Motor Vehicles issued an illegal alien a Commercial Driver’s License — this state of governance is asinine,” a Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said.