President Donald Trump's Freedom Haulers program was dealt a major setback by a conservative federal judge who froze his administration's sweeping records demand, newly revealed court records show.
Freedom Haulers, a Department of Transportation campaign to fast-track commercial trucking licenses for military veterans, was hit with an administrative stay amid a court battle with multiple states, Politico legal reporter Josh Gerstein revealed Saturday.
The program, which aims to replace tens of thousands of immigrant drivers stripped of licenses in the Trump administration's crackdown.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy raged on social media that the program was "ILLEGALS OUT, VETERANS IN."
Judge Anthony Trenga, a Virginia judge appointed by former President George W. Bush, signed an administrative stay that halted the Trump administration's push to collect commercial driver data from the association that manages states' shared licensing database, court records show.
Multiple states, led by Illinois, are suing the Department of Transportation to stop the data grab. The court granted the administrative stay after the coalition of states filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order earlier this week.
It bars the Association of American Motor Vehicle Administrators from handing over the information and directs that the association is "enjoined from providing the demanded data and information to any defendant, or any other agency acting in coordination with defendants," slamming the door on a possible workaround by the Trump administration.
The order also blocks the Trump administration from retaliating while the case proceeds. The Department of Transportation and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration are "enjoined from taking any adverse actions to implement or enforce" the demand, the order reads, "including, without limitation, terminating or threatening to terminate AAMVA's federal contracts or funding, or terminating or threatening to terminate the Plaintiff States' federal contracts or funding."
The records fight is the enforcement engine behind Freedom Haulers. According to the states' lawsuit, in order to strip commercial licenses from immigrant drivers at scale, the administration needs the underlying data, including the names, birthdates, license numbers, and Social Security numbers for millions of drivers held in the state-run system.