Updated May 6, 2025 to reflect Texas' corrections to CDL counts initially supplied.
President Donald Trump on Monday signed a sweeping executive order demanding all commercial truck drivers speak English and calling for an investigation into states issuing non-domiciled CDLs, often issued to foreign drivers.
Trump's moves on enforcing English language proficiency as an out-of-service violation have already borne fruit, with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance advancing the order and telling drivers to prepare for enforcement.
But on the issue of non-domiciled CDLs, or CDLs that some states issue to citizens of foreign countries or residents of another U.S. state, federal authorities have told Overdrive they don't really know where to begin.
Trump's executive order calls for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to "review" non-domiciled CDL issuance by states "to identify any unusual patterns or numbers or other irregularities" and then to improve methods for "verifying the authenticity and validity of both domestic and international commercial driving credentials."
Yet the FMCSA, CVSA and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators have all told Overdrive they're not even aware how many non-domiciled CDLs states have issued, let alone recognizing anything unusual with them.
Overdrive contacted 13 states and received data from six, some through Freedom of Information law requests. Between Illinois, Texas, Oregon, Washington, South Carolina and Maine, Overdrive initially confirmed the existence of at least 27,499 non-domiciled CDLs issued, with almost half of those documented out of Illinois and Texas in the last two years. Texas' Department of Public Safety then corrected the numbers it had initially shared with Overdrive. Unlike other states Texas DPS included renewals in its year-by-year data, and the state's non-domiciled CDL counts over 10 years more than doubled the initial total with 51,993 non-domiciled CDLs issued since 2015.
The most populous state, California, doesn't even track how many non-domiciled CDLs it issues (California and a few other states refer to them as "limited" CDLs).
FMCSA allows California to issue these "limited" CDLs to "individuals domiciled in a foreign country, other than Mexico and Canada, who have obtained their license from a state which complies with the testing and licensing standards required for CDL drivers," noted a rep from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, echoing federal guidance to all states on the issuance of non-domiciled CDLs. They might also be issued to "individuals domiciled in another state while that state is prohibited from issuing CDLs, if the person obtained the license from any state which elected to issue non-domiciled CDLs and which complies with the testing and licensing standards required for CDL drivers."
Among states who responded with data, the state of Illinois showed the most dramatic spike in non-domiciled CDLs issued, as shown in the chart below.
In 2015, the state issued just 80 non-domiciled CDLs, barely a tenth of a percent of the 68,785 CDLs issued that year. In 2025, 40% of CDLs issued so far are non-domiciled CDLs, according to state data provided shown in the chart below.
First-time CDL numbers issued by Illinois took a dive in 2020, and haven't fully recovered, yet non-domiciled CDLs have only become more common.
Illinois reported issuing 12,605 non-domiciled CDLs since 2020, and a total 13,668 since 2015.
As noted above, Texas DPS reported CDL counts including "renewals, modifications, duplications and originals," thus inflating their totals compared with other reporting states. Non-domiciled CDL issuance/renewal or modification hit a high point in 2015 with 7,654 total.
Expressed as a percentage, though, the share of non-domiciled CDLs increased roughly consistent with the trend observed in other states. In 2015, nondomiciled CDLs made up 1.64% of Texas' issuances/renewals or modifications. In 2024, with some ups and downs in the intervening years, the share was up to 2.84%, as shown in the chart below.
The state of Washington, similarly, has seen its share of non-domiciled CDLs expand, though on a smaller scale.
Since implementing non-domiciled CDLs in the state in 2018, shares of the total first-time-issued CDLs have risen from 4% before 2020 to 16% in 2024.
In total, Washington reported issuing 5,481 non-domiciled CDLs.
Neighboring Oregon is generally on the upswing, too. The state only shared data from July 2020 onward, but reported 11 non-domiciled CDLs issued in 2020, 54 in 2021, 140 in 2022, 445 in 2023 and 382 in 2024, for a total 1,032.
South Carolina reported numbers differently, noting that as of early March, the total number of lawfully present non-U.S. citizens who have commercial learner's permits issued by the state was 102. For CDLs it was 762, just about 0.5% of its total 152,620 commercial licenses in force.
Maine reported that out of about 80,000 CDLs of some form or another in circulation, 395 are non-domiciled CDLs.
Overdrive also queried Florida, Minnesota, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Kentucky and New York about their non-domiciled CDL populations, and did not hear back yet. We will update this story as other states send data, and here's thanks to those who did.
What's your view of the Trump administration's recent moves to boost enforcement of English proficiency and review non-domiciled CDL issuance? The brief four-question survey below offers a way to weigh in directly on the issues to help inform ongoing reporting.
