The administration is preparing additional workplace enforcement operations while investigating commercial driving schools and licenses issued to noncitizens following the death of a Pennsylvania state trooper.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
President Donald Trump’s administration is moving to intensify immigration enforcement at American workplaces while expanding a federal crackdown on commercial driver’s license fraud, training schools and noncitizen truck drivers whom officials say were improperly allowed onto the nation’s roads.
Border czar Tom Homan said workplace operations are already underway but should be occurring more frequently, arguing that such enforcement protects American workers, exposes labor-related crimes and holds employers and migrants accountable for violations of federal law.
During a July 16 interview with Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian, Homan said workplace enforcement serves several purposes beyond locating people who are living in the country illegally.
“We need to fire up worksite-enforcement operations, because I know, not only can you arrest illegal aliens that cause a decrease in wages for the American worker, not only does it hurt legitimate businesses because they undercut their bids and it puts Americans out of work, but also because… they’re in the country illegally,” Homan said.
Homan also said workplace investigations can uncover immigrants being exploited through criminal labor practices.
“You and I both are aware of human trafficking, forced labor, peonage, and where do we find a lot of victims of trafficking? On worksites!” Homan added during the interview.
Krikorian responded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not appear to be conducting many large-scale workplace operations amid opposition from employers and investors.
“We’re not seeing it,” Krikorian said.
Homan said the issue had been discussed during an administration conference call earlier that day and that officials were working to increase enforcement activity.
“Worksite needs to be a big part,” Homan said. “Matter of fact, just this morning we had a conference call on the status. They are doing it, but I want more. So we just had a status call this morning, and it’s moving.”
Homan said criminal violations discovered during workplace investigations could lead to prosecution in addition to immigration arrests.
“If they’ve committed a worksite violation that is criminal, they’re gonna be charged,” he said.
The push for additional workplace operations comes as Trump promises separate action involving noncitizen commercial truck drivers and the schools responsible for training them. The president announced the coming measures after Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Pahira Jr. was struck and killed while conducting a roadside safety inspection.
“My administration will soon take historic action to get illegal alien truck drivers off the roads who are just killing a lot of people,” Trump said. “They can’t read signs. Many of them are on drugs or alcohol, and they shouldn’t be driving these things.”
Trump delivered the remarks Tuesday at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit in Carlisle, where he cited the circumstances surrounding Pahira’s death.
“We’re here in Pennsylvania, where State Trooper Michael Pahira, Jr., was killed just two weeks ago by an illegal alien operating a semi-truck on a commercial driver’s license, which he should never have had,” Trump said during the Pennsylvania event, according to WGAL-TV.
Pahira was performing a safety check on another vehicle along Interstate 81 in Schuylkill County when he was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer, according to the information provided. The truck was driven by Michael Bon, a 33-year-old Haitian national who possessed a commercial driver’s license issued by Massachusetts.
Bon entered the United States on July 2, 2024, during the Biden administration and had been living in the country illegally for at least a year, officials stated. He applied for Temporary Protected Status on Oct. 26, 2024, but his application was never approved. The Department of Homeland Security notified him in June 2025 that he would be required to return to Haiti.
The administration’s planned response includes increased scrutiny of commercial driver training institutions suspected of helping ineligible noncitizens obtain licenses through falsified records, insufficient instruction or improper certifications.
The Department of Transportation announced in February that federal officials were preparing to examine more than 550 commercial driving schools for possible violations of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requirements. Inspectors were expected to review whether the schools were meeting federal training and safety standards as part of the department’s broader effort to remove noncompliant institutions from the federal training registry.
“For too long, the trucking industry has operated like the Wild, Wild, West, where anything goes and nobody asks any questions. The buck stops with me,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.
“American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel.”
Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reported this month that DHS and DOT had identified 75 entry-level commercial driver training schools suspected of participating in fraudulent licensing practices.
“NEW: DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and DOT have announced they’ve identified 75 entry level truck driver CDL schools across the U.S. that are suspected of fraudulently helping non-citizen drivers qualify for CDLs, and the agencies are partnering to investigate them, with HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] and DOT already visiting some of the schools to probe them,” Melugin wrote on X.
“Some of the schools are suspected of falsifying training records, providing improper certifications, and failing to properly train the drivers,” he continued.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said federal agencies were taking a coordinated approach to licensing fraud and road safety.
“Too many American lives have been lost in completely avoidable accidents because illegal aliens have been granted commercial driver’s licenses to drive trucks and 18-wheelers on America’s roadways,” Mullin said in a statement posted online.
“DHS law enforcement is partnering with the Department of Transportation to eliminate CDL fraud, strengthen the integrity of the CDL system, and investigate commercial driver’s license schools throughout the country. This is a whole of government approach to keep America’s roads safe.”
Duffy said DOT had already taken thousands of drivers and training providers out of the commercial transportation system.
“USDOT has spent the last year rooting out bad actors from our trucking industry,” Duffy said.
“We’ve knocked over 24,000 drivers off our roads for failing to speak English, forced states to cancel over 28,000 licenses illegally issued to foreign drivers, and purged over 9,500 unqualified training schools from our FMCSA [Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration] registry. DHS will be a force multiplier of our efforts to clean up America’s roads. President Trump is using every lever at his disposal to ensure the safety of American families.”
In a separate post addressing suspected CDL fraud, Duffy wrote, “FRAUDSTERS CAN RUN, BUT THEY CAN’T DRIVE.”
“If you cheat the system by giving illegal aliens commercial driver’s licenses: WE WILL FIND YOU, AND YOU WILL PAY A HEAVY PRICE. Our @DHSgov partnership is a massive force multiplier as we shut down these corrupt operations. President Trump is using every lever to clean up our roads and keep Americans safe,” he said.
The workplace and transportation initiatives are part of a wider administration strategy intended to discourage illegal immigration and reduce migrants’ access to jobs and other economic benefits. Other government agencies are using their regulatory authority to restrict access to housing, bank accounts, loans, schools and public assistance programs for people who are not legally eligible.
Business organizations and immigration advocates, however, have pushed back against arrests and deportations that remove foreign laborers from industries that have become dependent on lower-cost workers. Some political leaders and employers have defended the continued availability of what they describe as “affordable” migrant labor, while critics argue that reliance on those workers suppresses Americans’ wages and places law-abiding businesses at a competitive disadvantage.
A July 12 Politico report on immigration enforcement in Texas highlighted objections from construction employers whose workers had been detained or deported.
“Benny Melendez voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. But since Trump returned to the White House, it has been increasingly difficult for Melendez to run his small construction company in south Texas. He says immigration officers have detained workers at his job sites and while driving his company trucks. Since the beginning of 2025, more than 10 of those workers have been deported,” the report stated.
“The fear factor that it creates, the disruption that it creates, the environment that it creates, is debilitating,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of USHBC [U.S. Hispanic Business Council]. “If you’ve got a small business of 10 people or so, and you get even one person deported, you can imagine what that does to the morale of that business unit and to the fear of the business owner.”
The account did not include comments addressing potential benefits of enforcement for American workers, voters or employers that hire legally authorized employees.
Construction pay in Texas has remained below the national average after years in which federal and state policies permitted a large foreign-born workforce to enter the labor market, according to the information provided. Supporters of stricter enforcement contend that removing unauthorized workers from the labor pool is forcing companies to raise wages, improve working conditions and recruit more Americans.
Mike Callahan wrote in an April analysis of construction wages that the industry’s labor market had become unusually competitive.
“I’ve been in and around construction for over two decades and I don’t remember a labor market this tight,” Callahan said.
“The BLS Current Employment Statistics program put the average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory construction workers at $36.84 in February 2026 — a 4.1 percent year-over-year gain against a CPI of 2.8 percent. That’s a real wage gain of about 1.3 percentage points. Three straight years of construction wages outrunning inflation.
“Roofers saw the second-largest percentage gain of any trade at 4.9 percent year over year, reaching $28.40 per hour nationally. Roofers have historically been among the lower-paid production trades, but the labor supply for roofing work has tightened faster than almost anything else as younger workers pursue the more technical trades. The ones who stay command more.
“Laborers had the biggest percentage jump: 5.1 percent year over year to $24.80 per hour. That number will surprise people who think of general labor as an abundant commodity. It shouldn’t. The construction workforce shortage of 501,000 open positions includes a significant chunk of general labor — and in markets where wage growth elsewhere pulls workers toward higher-skilled roles, laborer availability has gotten genuinely tight. On some jobsites I’ve visited in the past year, the GC is paying a $2/hour premium over prevailing wage just to keep steady laborer count.”
A July 11 report from the South Texas division of Associated Builders and Contractors similarly described increased opportunities for people entering skilled trades.
“Trade jobs in electrical, mechanical, industrial, and infrastructure work now offer a combination of high wages, steady demand, and faster training paths,” the report stated.
The organization said worker shortages were placing additional pressure on contractors to recruit and train Americans through higher pay and expanded education opportunities.
“Workers who enroll in construction trades certificate programs earn roughly $50,000 more than those who do not,” the report said.
Homan illustrated his argument for workplace enforcement by recounting an encounter with a former roofing company owner who said he had been unable to compete against contractors paying unauthorized workers far less than the prevailing wage.
“So I put a new roof on my house several years ago. I had to call five or six companies until I had a company that guaranteed me a legal workforce, okay? Yeah. So while these people were coming to give me bids, this man and his son showed up. And he said, ‘I can’t replace the whole roof. I’m just looking to see if maybe I can repair it.’ But after he saw the damage, he said, ‘No, I need a whole new roof.’ So I asked him, you know, ‘You own a roofing company?’ And here’s what he told me. He had a roofing company. He had almost 20 U.S.-citizen employees, but he couldn’t win a bid because he was paying an American worker, you know, 20, 25 bucks an hour to get on that roof, while everybody else was paying an illegal alien seven bucks an hour.
“He couldn’t win the bids. So what happened? He laid off 20 U.S.-citizen employees and went out of business. Yep. So now he and his son are just going around doing repairs. That happens a thousand times a day across this country. That’s another reason worksite enforcement’s so important.”
Homan said the administration’s objective is to enforce federal immigration and employment laws while preventing unauthorized labor from undercutting legally employed Americans.
“Protect the American worker, keep the wages up,” Homan said.
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