The blue states and DC are desperately trying to avoid complying with a Dept of Homeland Security administrative subpoena for the records of their commercial driving license distribution.  In short, the blue states don’t want DHS or the American people to know how many illegal aliens are driving on CDLs.

Eastern District of Virginia Judge Anthony Trenga has just interceded to stop the states from forced compliance. Judge Trenga entered an administrative stay preventing DHS from obtaining roughly 17 million commercial driver’s license records it subpoenaed for immigration enforcement. [Read Administrative Stay Here]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) previously issued subpoenas for approximately 17 million commercial driver’s license (CDL) records, which has led to a legal battle involving multiple Democratic run states.

A coalition of 22 blue states is now suing the DHS, claiming that the demand for this sensitive data is part of a broader effort to create a “nationwide surveillance system” and that the DHS lacks legal authority to access such records. The lawsuit argues that the data could jeopardize drivers’ privacy and violate federal privacy laws. {LAWSUIT HERE}

The states are seeking to block the DHS’s access to the records, which include personal information such as names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers. The coalition argues DHS has no legal authority to demand the truck drivers’ license records and would jeopardize drivers’ privacy if they receive them.

American citizens are not permitted to know who and how many illegal aliens are operating dangerous trucks on the roadways.  The privacy of the illegal aliens is paramount to the safety of the American citizen motorist.

Think about that for a few moments.

All Your Trucking Risks Are Belong To Us!

YAHOO – The dispute centers on the Commercial Driver’s License Information System, known as CDLIS. Congress established it in 1986 under the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act to give states a secure way to share information about CDL applicants, chiefly to make sure a driver cannot hold licenses in multiple states or escape a disqualification by crossing a state line. It is operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, or AAMVA, a nonprofit whose members are the state licensing agencies, under contract with FMCSA since 1988. The database contains sensitive personal information, including names, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and Social Security numbers, for the roughly 17 million people who hold commercial licenses.

According to the states’ complaint, on August 11, 2026, FMCSA demanded that AAMVA turn over the full database, every driver’s records going back five years, by August 17, or face termination of AAMVA’s federal contracts and more than $10 million in federal funding. The states further allege that the Department of Homeland Security issued a separate immigration-enforcement subpoena to AAMVA for the same records with the same deadline, which the states characterize in their filing as coordinated with FMCSA.

The states also describe a sequence leading up to the demand. AAMVA, caught between the federal demand and the objections of many of its member states, proposed on August 14 to let its board consider an opt-in or opt-out choice, allowing each state to decide whether to authorize the transmission of its own data. According to the complaint, FMCSA rejected that proposal on August 11 as “unacceptable.” Facing the threat of losing its federal contracts, which the states say could shut CDLIS down entirely, AAMVA told the states it would comply and turn over the records on or around August 17. That is what prompted the coalition to file suit on August 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and to seek an emergency order blocking the transfer.

Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia are named in the suit against DOT, FMCSA, and AAMVA, and a coalition of 22 states and D.C. filed a companion suit against DHS over the parallel subpoena. The participating states include Illinois, California, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Michigan, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Virginia, Maryland, Minnesota, and others, along with Pennsylvania.

The Federal Government’s Position

The Department of Transportation has stated its case forcefully, and it rests on safety and enforcement.

DOT frames the data request as necessary to keep unsafe and unqualified drivers off the road, and specifically to identify commercial drivers who obtained licenses improperly. In its August 13 statement, Secretary Sean Duffy said, “Every administration since 1988 has had access to this basic database, so let’s be clear on what this ridiculous lawsuit is really all about. These radical state AGs want to make it harder for my Department to enforce the rules of the road and easier for dangerous illegal immigrant truck drivers to operate a big rig.” He added, “We will fight this lawsuit tooth and nail to prevent more senseless crashes by unqualified drivers.”

DOT tied the demand to a broader enforcement campaign it has run since an April 2025 executive order on the trucking industry. The department says that effort has revoked more than 30,000 improperly issued commercial licenses, removed nearly 10,000 fraudulent or unqualified CDL training providers from the federal registry, placed more than 26,000 operators out of service under English language proficiency standards, and closed what it calls the non-domiciled CDL loophole. The department has connected the data demand to the August 12, 2025 crash on Florida’s Turnpike, a three-fatality collision that DOT attributes to an undocumented driver operating with an improperly issued license.

DOT’s legal position, as stated in its release, is that AAMVA “is contractually and legally obligated to furnish the requested records at FMCSA’s direction, with federal protection against state-level liability.” In other words, the federal government argues it has always had access to this database, that AAMVA is required to comply with FMCSA’s direction, and that the states cannot hold AAMVA liable for complying.

LEGAL CASE

[…] The states argue that they, not the federal government, own the driver data stored in CDLIS, and that they placed it in the shared system for a specific, limited purpose, checking licensing status across states, under agreements that bar broader disclosure. Their position is that CDLIS was built as a state-to-state information-sharing tool, and that the statute creating it contains no provision allowing the federal government to demand a bulk transfer of all state records as a condition of participation. As Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul put it, “This database was created 40 years ago so states could share information with each other to stop unsafe drivers from operating commercial vehicles, and the federal government’s decision to ransack that database puts the whole system in jeopardy.”

[…] The complaint alleges that several states, including Illinois, California, Maine, and the District of Columbia, have contracts with AAMVA that expressly prohibit disclosure of confidential driver data without the state’s authorization and require compliance with state and federal privacy law. The states say no contracting state has authorized the release, and that the contracts “flatly bar” it. This is the basis for a breach-of-contract claim against AAMVA specifically. (SOURCE)