Truck Driver, Quiet Exit: When English Tests and Enforcement Change Who Stays on America’s Roads

On a recent afternoon in southwest Ohio, a truck driver walked away from an industry his family once treated like a second language. Near the junction of I-70 and I-75—two major freight arteries—Ibragim Chakhalidze described the decision to sell his truck as less a choice than a narrowing of options.

His father had started a trucking company after the family moved to Ohio in 2013 from south-east Russia through a government refugee program. They were formerly farmers, and Chakhalidze says trucking had been part of the family’s working life for decades, long before the move. In a community centered on Dayton, he said, that pattern repeated: the Ahiska Turk community in south-west Ohio built dozens of trucking businesses in a region that had been devastated by the fallout of the Great Recession.

Now, he said, a multi-generational link has been cut. After 13 years in the industry, Chakhalidze left trucking. “It was getting tougher and tougher, ” he said. “It’s very tough to find somebody to do trucking. I feel like most of the immigrants went to the hardest [industry], which was truck driving. ”

Why are immigrant drivers being taken off the road?

Federal enforcement has intensified at truck stops, weigh stations, and on the road, with ICE officers targeting immigrant truckers as they drive behind the wheel. The removals are tied, in part, to English language proficiency requirements: an estimated 9, 500 drivers have been taken off the roads in recent months for failing English proficiency requirements alone.

The scale of the change is hard to separate from daily operations. Chakhalidze framed it in practical terms: “One of the reasons I sold my truck was because I didn’t have a driver. A lot of people have sold their trucks. ” For small businesses built around one or two trucks, the loss of a single qualified driver can mean the truck sits idle, or gets sold, or the company closes a chapter it once assumed would continue.

The ripple effect goes beyond one community. Industry analysts say the crackdown may be sending drivers out of entire regions of the country, specifically in the Midwest—home to major transport arteries linking the East Coast with the South and western regions.

What does this mean for freight costs, labor shortages, and safety?

The enforcement push arrives at a time when tariff uncertainty is driving the cost of imported goods up, while freight costs are increasing dramatically on the back of the crackdown on thousands of immigrant truck drivers.

The freight system’s dependency on road transport adds pressure. Road freight is responsible for 70% of all cargo by weight in the United States, and the workforce includes a significant immigrant share: an estimated 17% of commercial semi-truck drivers are foreign-born. Trucking is especially attractive to immigrants from blue-collar backgrounds, and in places like southwest Ohio, that attraction helped rebuild economic footing after the Great Recession’s local shock.

Government actions have also included moves affecting training pipelines. Last month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the shutting down of 550 commercial driving schools. This comes alongside a note that the number of fatalities involving large trucks declined in 2023 and the first half of 2024, the most recent period with available data.

Companies, meanwhile, can face practical disruptions when drivers are detained. Accounts suggest difficulty recovering freight and vehicles—often valued at millions of dollars per load—after drivers are detained. Even when a truck and load are technically “on the system, ” the real-world chain of custody can be interrupted at the roadside, turning schedules into uncertainty and raising costs across the logistics chain.

What are workers and advocates saying about the ICE crackdown and English tests?

In Chakhalidze’s telling, the story is not framed as politics but as a tightening squeeze on labor and continuity. His family’s move into trucking was rooted in what they knew how to do, and in the stability it could provide. But after years in the industry, he said, the ability to keep a truck running came down to finding a driver—a task that became harder, not easier.

Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, warned about the combined impact on safety and workforce stability. “Safety and workforce stability must go hand in hand. Broad restrictions on immigrant drivers risk harmful profiling and deepening severe labor shortages, ” Murray said.

She argued for a balance that does not remove legally authorized workers from an economy that relies on them. “We should ensure rigorous training, vetting and compliance, not limit access to legally authorized drivers who are essential to our economy, ” Murray said.

The enforcement climate also intersects with public concern about safety, especially following separate incidents last fall in which an undocumented immigrant truck driver and an asylum seeker from India and Serbia respectively were arrested and charged in relation to the deaths of other road users in Indiana and California. Their lawyers say their involvement amounts to—an account that remains incomplete in the available record here, underscoring how quickly individual tragedies can become symbols in a broader debate.

Where does the response go from here?

The administration’s approach has combined on-road enforcement with actions affecting commercial driving education, and the immediate effects are being felt by small operators and community-based businesses as much as by large fleets. In Florida, ICE agents last summer deployed highway weigh stations as enforcement check points, illustrating how roadside infrastructure can be used not only for safety and compliance but also for immigration enforcement.

For communities like the Ahiska Turks in southwest Ohio—who built businesses in the long shadow of the Great Recession—the question is not only how many drivers remain, but whether the next generation sees trucking as a viable path. Chakhalidze’s departure from the industry, after 13 years, suggests a kind of quiet unraveling: not a dramatic collapse, but a steady thinning of people willing—or able—to stay.

Back near the meeting point of I-70 and I-75, the trucks still pass, carrying the country’s cargo by weight and keeping shelves stocked. Yet the scene looks different when you imagine the missing seats in the cabs. The next time a truck driver decides to sell a rig for lack of labor, the loss is not only personal—it is another small subtraction from a workforce that many analysts already fear is running short.

Image caption (alt text): A truck driver pauses near the I-70 and I-75 junction in southwest Ohio as English proficiency enforcement and an ICE crackdown reshape the labor pool.