In a comprehensive investigation into commercial trucking fraud, Charlie Kirk and investigative journalist Savannah Hernandez have uncovered what they describe as a massive web of fraudulent CDL (Commercial Driver’s License) operations that allegedly endangers American highways and exploits federal programs. The investigation, conducted by TPSA Front Lines journalist Hernandez, reveals disturbing patterns of CDL mills, fraudulent trucking companies, and unqualified drivers obtaining licenses through corrupt practices.
According to Kirk’s reporting, the investigation was prompted by a tragic incident in Austin, Texas, where Hernandez reports that “an Aritrian migrant slammed into stop traffic. He ended up causing an 18 car pileup, killing a 4-year-old and an infant.” This incident led to a broader examination of how individuals without proper qualifications are allegedly obtaining commercial driver’s licenses and operating 80,000-pound semi-trucks on American highways.
The investigation centers on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and what Kirk describes as dramatically relaxed regulations over the past decade. Hernandez states that “the FMCSA was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to go ahead and allow CDL schools to self-certify because during COVID-19 there was this trucker shortage.’” This policy change reportedly led to an explosion in CDL schools, with Hernandez revealing that “We went from 2100 CDL schools to over 32,000 CDL schools within a matter of years.”
Kirk reports on the alleged fraudulent practices at these CDL mills, where Hernandez claims migrants are obtaining licenses in as little as three to ten days. She states, “We have seen reviews that say 3 days. We have seen reviews that say 10 days. Um, so these programs pretty much offer a fasttrack CDL.” The investigation reveals that many of these schools allegedly advertise on TikTok in foreign languages, targeting migrant communities.
The financial fraud aspect is particularly troubling. Kirk’s investigation uncovered numerous instances of trucking companies allegedly defrauding federal programs. In Columbus, Ohio, Hernandez reports on Jamal Trucking Company, which “got a $314,000 PPP loan. They were only open for 3 months.” She further states that “just a couple months after getting that PPP loan, their operating authority to operate trucks on the road was revoked and they were ultimately shut down by the DOT because they refused to prove that they were a legitimate trucking company.”
Another case mentioned involves trucking companies that allegedly received $618,000 in PPP loans despite questionable legitimacy. Kirk’s investigation also found that “hundreds of them across the nation that are registered under the name No Name Given,” suggesting systematic fraud in company registration.
The investigation reveals what Hernandez calls “chameleon carriers” - trucking companies that allegedly change their DOT numbers to avoid accountability for crashes and safety violations. In Greenwood, Indiana, Kirk’s team documented dozens of trucking companies registered to single residential addresses, with Hernandez explaining that “This is what all those trucking companies are” - entities that simply change their identification when caught violating regulations.
The human cost is staggering. Hernandez reports that “in 30 crashes in 2025, 17 Americans killed. And all 30 of those crashes, it was a non-domiciled CDL holder.” These non-domiciled CDLs are allegedly obtained by migrants using employment authorization documents received when crossing the border.
Former trucker Michael Lombard, interviewed for the investigation, reveals the economic impact on American truckers. Kirk quotes him stating that “driver salaries have been cut in half of what they were making for the same job in 1979 versus today.” This wage suppression allegedly occurs because migrant-run companies can undercut American businesses by exploiting foreign workers.
The investigation also uncovered evidence of worker exploitation, with reports of drivers being forced to work excessive hours and threatened with deportation if they refuse. Hernandez describes cases in San Antonio, Texas, where “two Hispanic men here in San Antonio actually in Texas were importing migrants in from Mexico, utilizing these illegal workers and basically exploiting them, making them drive extra hours.”
President Trump has responded to these concerns, with Kirk reporting that at the State of the Union, Trump called for Congress to pass “the Delilah law barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.” Kirk notes there are currently “200,000 non-domicile CDL drivers on the road right now,” representing what he describes as a significant safety threat to American highways.
Key Facts — All Alleged
| |
|---|
| Who | Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), Jamal Trucking Company, CDL mills, migrant trucking companies |
| Amount | $314,000 (Jamal Trucking PPP loan), $618,000 (other trucking company PPP loans) |
| Location | Austin, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; San Antonio, Texas; Greenwood, Indiana |
| Program | PPP loans, workforce development program grants |
| Status | Alleged |
In Charlie Kirk’s Words
“We went from 2100 CDL schools to over 32,000 CDL schools within a matter of years”
— Charlie Kirk
“They got a $314,000 PPP loan. They were only open for 3 months”
— Charlie Kirk
“In 30 crashes in 2025, 17 Americans killed. And all 30 of those crashes, it was a non-domiciled CDL holder”
— Charlie Kirk
Take Action
Contact your representative about CDL fraud and trucking safety violations fraud in Texas.
American taxpayers deserve accountability. If this investigation concerns you, make your voice heard.
Sample Letter to Your Representative
Dear [Representative Name],
I am writing as a concerned taxpayer regarding alleged CDL fraud and trucking safety violations fraud in Texas. Recent independent investigations have brought to light troubling patterns of waste and abuse involving taxpayer-funded programs.
I urge your office to:
- Investigate the allegations of CDL fraud and trucking safety violations fraud documented in this and related reports
- Support stronger oversight and accountability measures for federal and state funding
- Ensure that taxpayer dollars are protected from fraud, waste, and abuse
- Provide transparency on how these programs are being monitored
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
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Full Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. May contain errors.
We are joined by one of Charlie’s favorite reporters in field and that is Savannah Hernandez. She’s a TPSA front lines journalist. Uh always uncovering huge scoops and you can follow her on uh X. She’s always blown up there. Uh Savannah, welcome to the show. Uh thanks for making time. I know we had a little bit of a time zone mishap there. » Andrew, every single time I come on this show, we get the times messed up. So, we’re here. I’m excited. I’m very excited to to talk with you guys today about what we’re doing at Front Lines. » We have good news for you, Savannah, because I believe the times change again next week and it’s going to make it all confusing again because Arizona doesn’t do the time shift. » Yeah. So, we’re going to be back on Pacific time, which » it’s going to be going to be lovely. Uh but let’s let’s dive right into it. Uh Savannah, you’ve been posting some great clips. You guys have dived into that whole » uh fraud commercial trucking investigation. Uh, I kind of want to ask about let’s talk about first about your your guys’s new uh trucking mini documentary about how we’ve basically given the country’s valuable trucking industry away to whoever wants it, I suppose. » Yeah, Blake. So, honestly, the reason why I got interested in this is because I live in Austin, Texas, and last year, an Aritrian migrant uh slammed into stop traffic. He ended up causing an 18 car pileup, killing a 4-year-old and an infant. I was mortified and I’ve been scared to drive on the highway since. Now, this is a continued pattern that’s been happening and we have seen Americans die again and again and again and many people are asking the question, how are illegal immigrants uh being given permission to drive 80,000 lb semi-truckss on the highways. So, that’s what this documentary highlights and entails. And when I first asked this question, I was thinking, okay, you know, maybe there was a little loophole that got exploited and that’s it. Well, what ended up happening is in the trucking industry, we unveiled a web of fraud so vast that this actually just scratches the surface. And what we focused in on here were again the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration or the FMCSA for short. a lot of the uh regulations that they have been relaxing over the last 10 years that have led to CDL mills aka SA uh shady CDL schools that have been handing out these licenses to migrants like Candy leading to the highway system that we have today where you had a migrant just yesterday in Missouri that was driving the wrong way on the highway for over three miles. So, um, this documentary delves into all of it and what we found was shocking because I’m talking entire CDL schools with Tik Tok pages of migrants that are advertising these CDL programs in different languages. Now, what I found is that basically the FMCSA was like, “Hey, we’re going to go ahead and allow CDL schools to self-certify because during CO 19 there was this trucker shortage, right? This was something that was really pushed. And in the trucking industry, these truckers stated, “Yeah, there was a small shortage, but what ended up happening was this fear was exploited to mass import cheap foreign labor.” And what you’re seeing on screen now are these shady CDL schools in which migrants came in. The the FMCSA relaxed those regulations. We went from 2100 CDL schools to over 32,000 CDL schools within a matter of years. Yes. Because of the self-certification. And it gets even worse than that because the FMCSA then said, “Hey, by the way, you can also become a third party tester.” So basically, someone can go to your CDL school and then you can give them a certificate from the school and they can take that to the DMV and then they can get their license. Now, the way that this is an interconnected web of fraud is you have migrants who come over to the United States. They start a trucking company. They sponsor migrants from the foreign countries that they’re from to attend or to work at their trucking companies. They send them to a migrant-run CDL school. They’re fasttracked for the CDL. There’s corruption at the DMV sometimes, so they’re able to maybe even just buy that CDL license or they’re passing the program in 3 to 10 days. Uh, by the way, per actual truckers, it takes a lot longer than 3 to 10 days to get your CDL certification. » Pause. Uh, you’re okay. You’re saying they get a CDL in 3 to 10 days and they don’t even speak English. » So, this is what they are saying in these reviews. And yes, um again, this is why this was shocking, Andrew, because uh Danielle Chaffen, she’s who I interviewed for this, she was saying that the reviews for CDL schools across the nation are a gold mine because one, every single review is written in a a name that is not American very clearly. And then the reviews um the the students are writing in those reviews how many days it took them to get their CDL certification from these schools. We have seen reviews that say 3 days. We have seen reviews that say 10 days. Um, so these programs uh pretty much offer a fasttrack CDL and this is again just this really dangerous web that’s going on and these migrants have done a really great job of coming in embedding um creating these schools, creating these companies and again this is just the CDL side. We also have trucking companies, hundreds of them across the nation that are registered under the name No Name Given. And that’s where these many reports that I’ve been posting on my ex account have come from, where you have trucking companies that are getting $618,000 in PPP loans and the company doesn’t really seem legitimate. One of the u most » insane stories, yes, was out of Columbus, Ohio. This was Jamal Trucking Company. They got a $314,000 PPP loan. They were only open for 3 months. there was no activity on their uh company and just a couple months after getting that PPP loan, their operating authority to operate trucks on the road was revoked and they were ultimately shut down by the DOT because they refused to prove that they were a legitimate trucking company. So again, the portion that I was speaking about regarding the CDL schools, that is just one aspect of this. The fraudulent trucking companies because in some cases you have 600 companies in California registered to one address. That’s another aspect of this. These companies are breaking into our PPP loans. They’re using workforce development program grants. Um, millions of dollars are being poured into this industry as well. But, um, to be honest, I think most importantly, you have unqualified migrant drivers on the road who do not speak English, do not understand the metric system here in the United States of America. I mean, Andrew, think about going to Germany right now. Think about going to Russia right now or to India and trying to drive an 80,000lb semi-truck on their road. Are you going to be able to read their signs? Are you going to understand the measurement of their bridges? No, you’re not. And that’s what we’re doing right now is importing people from these foreign countries and um throwing them on our roads. By the way, sorry to to ramble on about this. Lots of information here, but um a lot of these migrant trucking companies as well, the let me phrase this correctly, the largest amount of countries that are tied to stolen freight from the United States, it is people from those countries that are driving here in the United States. » Exactly. Exactly. And I even with your analogy, at least if I were to go to India and try to drive a truck, I have been driving for decades. But it occurs to me a lot of these people come to the United States, they might never have owned a car in their home country. they might not have driven regularly. I want to throw up this image because you might have some thoughts about it and we’ll give you 45 seconds. Uh let’s throw up 581. This is something that went viral the other day. This is the trucking companies in one residential subdivision of the town of Greenwood, Indiana. You there’s must be 50 maybe 80 of them and that’s one subdivision. He posts another in another just intersection in the same town and there’s dozens more. Is that what you’re finding? 30 seconds, just dozens of these things. And what does that represent? » Yes, Blake. And what this represents is something called a chameleon carrier. So the DOT gives a specific number to a trucking company. That trucking company and that number are tied to all of the crashes, all of the safety violations to that trucking company. So instead of shutting down when they are found to be in violation of something or they’re involved in a horrific crash, they simply change out that number. That’s what all those trucking companies are. This is uh we’re gonna Savannah, can you say one more because there’s actually more here that we got to get to. Plus, Delilah’s law that President Trump uh called for at the State of the Union. That’s a beautiful moment, by the way, in a series of beautiful moments. It’s I feel like they all deserve so much uh oxygen and attention. On Tik Tok, teens get over 50 built-in protections from the start. But for parents, further visibility and control of content can help create the right environment. That’s where family pairing comes in. Teens under 18 have a 60inute screen time reminder in place. And with family pairing, parents can set their own screen time limits or even set restricted times based on what works best for their family. Family pairing lets parents link accounts to see their teens followers and who they follow and help restrict content that’s not right for them. Because peace of mind shouldn’t take guesswork. With easy to use tools like family pairing, parents can help shape the environment that makes the most sense for their teen first. That way, discovering creativity can follow. Learn more at tik tok.com/guardians guide. Sav, I want to play this clip because it stood out to me from your documentary. I cannot tell you how infuriating it is that every industry in this freaking country, it seems like, has tried to undercut American workers. I get it. There’s a profit motive, but at some point, our country, our country’s companies must be in service to the good of the country. You have to put country over the freaking five extra pennies in your wallet. And we’re doing it to truckers. This is This clip just hit me really hard. I want to play it and it’s it’s a 50-second clip, so bear with me. 546. » We have outsourced labor to other countries to manufacture our stuff in order to get cheaper products and we’re now trying to figure out a way to do that in other professions in this country. But you can’t outsource trucking. You can’t you need the trucks to drive in the US. So then how can you then try to keep things cheap or keep things as cheap as possible or get the best margins? You bring in the labor from the outside. So driver salaries have been cut in half of what they were making for the same job in 1979 versus today, but the productivity has gone through the roof. And so when you take an individual who’s not not American and they come here and they find out that they’re paid by the mile, if you’re paid by the mile, you want to get as many miles as possible as fast as you possibly can. And so the idea of safety or anything kind of goes out the window. » Yeah. So it’s a so many issues in that clip. Tell us about it, Savv. » Sure. So I of course wanted to sit down with an actual trucker. So this was Michael Lombard. He was a former trucker and I basically have heard the same thing from him as multiple people in the industry that it is American trucking businesses that have gone out of business because they can’t compete anymore with these migrant companies that are working for half. Now, further in this dock and further in this clip, uh Michael talks about how uh two Hispanic men here in San Antonio actually in Texas were importing migrants in from Mexico, utilizing these illegal workers and basically exploiting them, making them drive extra hours. That’s why oftentimes too with these illegal immigrant truck crashes, sometimes these people are falling asleep at the wheel because they are making them drive more hours than they’re supposed to. they’re falling asleep at the wheel. And then if they say, “Hey, I don’t want to do this anymore.” What ends up happening is the the company owners say, “Okay, well, we’re going to turn you into ICE. Then we are going to withhold whatever immigration papers that you gave to us that we brought you in here with.” So, um, again, these migrants are being exploited and then the trucking companies and then the American truckers can’t compete with the fact that you have all of these people working for half and it’s really really impacting Americans and again American businesses. It it’s really heartbreaking and like I said, safety is at the forefront. You can’t put a price on an American life and that is essentially what these companies have done. they continue to choose cheap foreign labor and like Michael was talking about, you can’t outsource trucking and so we have imported um thousands of these migrant truckers that are unqualified and then you have states all across uh America that have actively worked to give these people what is called a non-domiciled CDL because uh migrants don’t get the same type of CDL that an American trucker would. they get a non-domiciled CDL. And in the I want to say it was 30 crashes in 2025, 17 Americans killed. And all 30 of those crashes, it was a non-domiciled CDL holder. And the way that these migrants were getting these non-domiciled CDLs while being here illegally is because when they crossed the border, they were given employment authorization documents. And so, uh, that’s what a lot of senators are trying to work on right now. Right. If you have temporary protected status, if you use employment authorization documents, aka you’re an illegal immigrant, you shouldn’t be working in the first place. You can’t have your CDL anymore. Uh so the DOT has done a good job at shutting down these CDL mills, at trying to really um clamp down on everything that’s been happening. But we do have to keep in mind that we have 200,000 non-domicile CDL drivers on the road right now. And uh this has been happening since 2016. For the last 10 years, the industry has degraded. And Sav, I just want to remind our audience some of these more high-profile crashes. Haring Hargender Singh in Florida, an Indian national in the US illegally since 2018 and he pulled that illegal U-turn in Florida in St. Lucy County and killed three people. Jazzapit Singh in California, 21-year-old Indian national who entered the US illegally in 2022 and was released under Biden era policies attained a California CDL and he was apparently driving under the influence of drugs caused an 8 vehicle fiery crash on I 10 in San Bernardino killing three people in a minivan. He was charged. Bezan Bashek also Indian a Kazak or a Kazak national who entered the US in 2023 via the CBP1 app. There you go. Uh obtained a CDL in Pennsylvania. He caused a head-on crash killing four people. Sukip Sukdeep Singh, another Singh, Indiana. Uh an Indian national in the US illegally allegedly ran a red light in Hendricks County causing a fatal crash that killed a 64y old Terry Schultz. Singh was arrested and handed over to ICE. And it goes on and on. Tennessee, another one in Indiana. This is a massive, massive problem. And I want to just play this clip from President Trump at the State of the Union because it was so important. 580. » Many if not most illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger, or location. That’s why tonight I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Delila law barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. It it’s so clearly just such a a looting operation of America and it’s just been allowed to happen for decad. It just frustrates me because we should pass that law but Congress should just abolish this entire system that lets us bring in hundreds of thousands. We need jobs for lowerkilled Americans and this is one of the last ones we have. » A great job for an American that doesn’t have a college degree for example. This is a great job. Sam, last 30 seconds to you. » Sure. Like you were saying, Blake, this used to be like an all-American type of job, right? American trucking was kind of like our last line of defense where the average American could go and utilize this type of industry to uh search out and achieve their American dream. And even that has been taken away. We’ve seen fraud from, you know, the daycare industry, the healthcare industry, and now even trucking is impacted. So, I really do hope that uh Congress, that the Senate, that the entirety of government um uses the full force of their power to fix this problem because again, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the left or the right. You’re driving on America’s highways and they should be