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The pessimists are wrong, and the numbers prove it.

While a chorus of commentators insists the American economy is faltering, businesses are seeing strong returns — and investing those dollars to grow. From record-breaking tax refunds this spring to surging business investment across every sector, the evidence of economic strength is overwhelming for anyone willing to look past the headlines.

American businesses aren't just investing — they're going on offense. Companies are purchasing equipment, upgrading technology, modernizing facilities and hiring people. They're planning for growth, not bracing for decline. And thanks to the Trump administration's tax reforms, they finally have the certainty and the incentives to put capital to work right now.

WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIST PROJECTS GDP GROWTH COULD TOP 5% AMID CAPITAL SPENDING BOOM

The One Big Beautiful Bill fundamentally changed the game. For entrepreneurs still sitting on the sidelines, the message couldn't be clearer: stop waiting. This is the year to invest. Every month you delay is a month your competitors are pulling ahead, taking advantage of provisions designed to reward exactly the kind of bold investment that builds lasting success.

Consider what's happened. The permanent restoration of 100% bonus depreciation lets businesses recover the full cost of qualifying investments immediately — not over years. That means a manufacturer can purchase new machinery, a restaurant can renovate its kitchen or a tech startup can upgrade its servers, and every one of them can deduct the full cost in the same tax year.

TRUMP'S TAX CUTS HAND REPUBLICANS A KILLER ARGUMENT FOR THE MIDTERMS

Section 179 has been expanded, letting small businesses deduct even more upfront. The IRS has even issued guidance to make the path clearer and give owners the confidence to move forward without hesitation.

Now look at what happened this spring. A Government Accountability Office report released Aug. 10 shows the IRS issued $296 billion in refunds during the 2026 filing season — a 17% jump from the previous year. That's $43 billion more flowing back into Americans' pockets.

REPUBLICANS BET HIGHER TAX REFUNDS WILL BOOST MIDTERM CHANCES AS BLUE STATES RESIST RELIEF

The average refund rose by $333, and the IRS processed more than 8 million additional refunds. The GAO attributed this surge, in part, to millions claiming new deductions created by the law — including provisions for qualified tips and overtime pay.

Let that sink in. Working Americans — waitresses, factory workers, overtime earners — are keeping more of what they earn because this tax code finally rewards work instead of punishing it. That's not a talking point. That's real money in real people's bank accounts. Money that gets spent at local restaurants, invested in home improvements, saved for college tuition and plowed back into the communities where these families live and work.

TRUMP HITS KEY BATTLEGROUNDS TO SELL TAX CUTS, BOOST GOP AHEAD OF MIDTERMS

The critics who keep telling you the economy is weak need to explain why businesses keep expanding. Why entrepreneurs keep taking risks. Why companies keep investing in productivity, hiring and growth. The answer is simple: they see opportunity. They see an economy gaining momentum, not losing it. While the doomsayers scroll through bad headlines, business owners are reading their balance sheets — and what they see is encouraging enough to act.

The Trump administration delivered tax policies that reward investment, protect working families and let Americans keep more of what they earn. When business owners know they can recover investment costs immediately, they act. When workers see bigger refunds because the tax code now values their tips and overtime, they spend, save and reinvest in their own futures and in their local economies.

LIZ PEEK: THE TRUMP ECONOMY IS DOING BETTER THAN THE MEDIA WANT TO ADMIT

Tax relief doesn't just sound good on paper. It translates directly into growth. The proof is in every business owner putting capital on the line right now — and in the billions returned to American taxpayers this year. When a company buys new equipment, expands a facility, hires another worker or opens another location, that's not speculation. That's commitment. That's confidence made visible.

The law also strengthens incentives for domestic innovation by allowing qualifying research and development expenditures to be deducted immediately. That means companies aren't just investing in what they already do — they're investing in what comes next. Favorable treatment for qualified production property gives manufacturers another reason to build here, expand here and hire here. America is open for business, and the tax code now reflects that reality.

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The businesses I work with aren't retreating. They're expanding. They're hiring. They're investing for the long term. That's not what a weak economy looks like. That's what an economy preparing to roar looks like.

Anyone still calling this economy weak isn’t paying attention to the right indicators.

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The Justice Department warned states they could lose billions of dollars in welfare funding if they do not report known illegal migrants to the federal government, according to a legal opinion released Wednesday.

The DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel said tates participating in two key welfare programs must require all state agencies to report individuals known to be unlawfully present to the Department of Homeland Security, a significant shift that the administration says will help enforce President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration. The opinion reverses a 1998 Office of Legal Counsel interpretation that limited the reporting requirement to agencies administering the programs.

Previously, only the state agencies that administered the funding for the welfare programs were required to report illegal migrants, while other state agencies that might be aware of these individuals, including colleges and departments of motor vehicles, were not subject to this mandate.

DHS BOSS REVEALS OVAL OFFICE PLAN TO 'WITHHOLD FUNDING' FROM SANCTUARY CITIES AFTER AGGRESSIVE NEW YORK BUST

"Failure to comply may lead to serious consequences, including loss of program funding," Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock said in a statement.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has taken an aggressive approach targeting both illegal and legal immigration.

The president's crackdown on illegal immigration has included deploying federal agents into cities across the country to conduct raids on migrant communities and increasingly partnering with state and local law enforcement and outside companies to locate suspected illegal migrants.

DOJ ACCUSES MARYLAND OF 'ACTIVE AND DELIBERATE EFFORT' TO PREVENT DEPORTATIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS: LAWSUIT

The administration has repeatedly attempted to pressure Democrat-led states that have refused cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, including by threatening federal funding.

The shift could face legal challenges. Democrat-led states have already sued to block DHS from collecting personal details of people receiving funds under one of the programs, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Courts have also limited some administration efforts to require the sharing of information on migrants with DHS. But in some cases, judges allowed federal immigration authorities to collect certain information, including Medicaid data.

All 50 states and Washington, D.C., participate in the reporting requirements tied to the two programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income.

Federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families grants exceed $16.5 billion annually, and Supplemental Security Income federal benefits exceed $60 billion annually.

Illegal migrants are not eligible for either program.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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For more than a quarter century, Venezuela was not merely poorly governed. It was captured by Cuban communist intelligence services. Russian arms entrenched it. Chinese loans stripped the country of sovereignty while the Chávez–Maduro regime looted Venezuela, wrecked the currency, and filled the prisons. The result was a failed state: mass exile, political prisoners, electrical blackouts, and a platform for America’s enemies in the Western Hemisphere. That history is what critics of the new U.S.–Venezuela energy agreement prefer to forget.

Last week, President Trump announced a historic oil partnership with Venezuela’s interim government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth negotiated it. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez confirmed the core terms: 17 strategic fields holding more than 65 billion barrels, a production target above 1.5 million barrels a day, more than $100 billion in private investment, and large fiscal flows to Venezuela. Whether the final term is a generation or a century-scale U.S. stake, the meaning is the same. The United States has taken a secured interest in the resource that once financed communism in Cuba and subversion all over Latin America.

Previously, Venezuela’s oil was "sovereign" on paper and enslaved in practice—used to pay Cuban handlers, Russian weapons, and Chinese debt while Venezuelans fled. Sovereignty without property rights, honest courts, and a state that cannot be flipped by the Cuban communist regime is an empty word.

TRUMP TOUTS ACCESS TO 65 BILLION BARRELS OF VENEZUELAN OIL IN DEAL HE SAYS WILL SLASH GAS PRICES

Critics on the left call the deal colonialism. Hard-line Chavistas call it betrayal. Parts of the opposition call it illegitimate because an interim government signed it. Democratic Socialists who treated Maduro as a diplomatic inconvenience suddenly discovered constitutional piety about hydrocarbons. They share a fantasy: that a weak, cash-starved, institutionally gutted Venezuela can stay free if Washington keeps its distance.

History says otherwise: A vacuum in Venezuela is not filled by angels. It is filled by Cuban, Russian, and Chinese intelligence, along with the criminal networks, like the Tren de Aragua, that grew up under the Venezuelan socialist regime and extended through the Western Hemisphere. That axis produced the torture chambers, the refugee crisis, and the political prisons.

A long-term U.S. commercial stake—backed by American security interests—is insurance. It raises the cost of a second communist capture. It makes it harder for a future corrupt regime to re-nationalize the industry overnight and resume shipping the crude to Cuba in exchange for rebuilding the repressive apparatus. American companies built much of that industry in the twentieth century before Chávez confiscated it. The decay that followed was communist plunder. Reopening the oil fields under American capital and strategic oversight is how you prevent the next plunder.

RUBIO WARNS CUBA HAS INFILTRATED US WITH SPIES, CALLS COMMUNIST REGIME AN 'ESPIONAGE SUPERPOWER'

The deal must not become a substitute for liberty. Oil that merely finances the same repressive regime is not reconstruction. It is a richer dictatorship. Secretary Rubio has been clear since January, after the capture of Nicolás Maduro, that the United States would not occupy Venezuela. It would use leverage.

The plan has three overlapping phases: stabilization, so the country does not collapse into war; recovery, so Western firms enter on fair terms and the wrecked industry can be rebuilt; and transition, so Venezuelans recover a government that is representative and no longer an outpost of the Castro regime. That is the Donroe Doctrine in practice: the Monroe Doctrine updated for an era in which the threat is not a European monarch but the communist powers that treated Venezuela as a forward operating base. Trump had the courage to remove the dictator. Rubio now has the leverage to keep the country from sliding back.

Let’s look at the results on the ground.

FAMILIES SUE MADURO IN US, ACCUSE EX-PRESIDENT OF DIRECTING POLICE UNIT TIED TO EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS

Maduro is gone. Oil once sold at discounted rates to bail out U.S. adversaries is being pulled toward market terms. Hundreds of political prisoners have left their cells, a feat that years of "engagement" failed to accomplish. An amnesty process exists to rebuild a nation fractured by a socialist dictatorship.

None of this is finished, but all of this was unthinkable under the policies the critics now miss. Those critics were content with failure dressed as prudence: mild sanctions, dialogue with a regime that denied an election it stole, and humanitarian gestures that let Cuban intelligence run Venezuela. They complain after a few months that the current progress is imperfect, but they would have waited another decade for a "perfect" transition that the Cuban regime would never have allowed.

MADURO ALLY DEPORTED TO US OVER ALLEGED BILLION-DOLLAR CORRUPTION SCHEME TIED TO OIL, FOOD PROGRAM

The oil agreement is a foundation, not a finish line. Every remaining political prisoner must be released, even as human-rights groups still count hundreds behind bars. Venezuela should also complete the dollarization that its citizens are vocally calling for. Venezuelans abandoned the Bolívar because socialism destroyed it. Formal dollarization would lock in stability, invite diaspora capital home, and make it harder for a future government to finance repression. Oil proceeds must be fenced off from the old patronage machine and audited. And stabilization cannot become a permanent excuse. Venezuelans need an electoral calendar and courts that are not controlled by the ruling, Diosdado Cabello-led socialist party..

Let’s be clear: The agreement is a major strategic and economic bet, but its precise duration, legal foundation and long-term enforceability remain unsettled.

TOP ENERGY TRADER HAILS TRUMP'S VENEZUELA OIL DEAL AS A 'GENERATIONAL WIN' FOR GAS PRICES

To those who shout "sovereignty": a nation whose oil financed Cuban tutelage was not sovereign. Partnership with the only superpower that has the capital, the technology, and the interest in enabling Venezuelans to be free is how sovereignty becomes real. 

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To those who say the interim government lacks legitimacy for long contracts: they are right that legitimacy must be completed at the ballot box. They are wrong that the alternative is idle oil fields and an open door to Cuba, China, and Russia. Contracts can be ratified by a future democratic congress. Collapse cannot.

Attacks on Marco Rubio are attacks on the only U.S. Secretary of State who has delivered results in Venezuela. Now is the time to finish the job, empty the prisons, dollarize, audit the revenue, and push for free elections. Do that, and this agreement will be remembered not as a bargain with a remnant of Chavismo, but as the moment Venezuela shut the door on communism.

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Convicted double murderer Mackenzie Shirilla suffered another legal setback after the Ohio Supreme Court denied her attorneys' request to reconsider its decision not to hear her latest appeal.

Shirilla, now 21, is serving two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life for killing her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, 20, and their friend, Davion Flanagan, 19, after prosecutors said she intentionally drove her Toyota Camry into a brick building in Strongsville, Ohio, in 2022.

Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy denied Shirilla's motion for reconsideration after her attorneys asked the state's highest court to revisit its June 23 decision declining to review her case, according to court records.

"It is ordered by the court that the motion for reconsideration in this case is denied," Kennedy wrote.

MACKENZIE SHIRILLA'S TEXTS SURFACE AS 'HELL ON WHEELS' DRIVER'S APPEAL COLLIDES WITH NETFLIX'S 'THE CRASH'

Tuesday's decision leaves intact a lower-court ruling that Shirilla's postconviction challenge was filed one day too late.

Shirilla's attorneys have argued that the missed deadline resulted from confusion over the filing timeline, including a calendar mistake involving the 2024 leap year.

The postconviction challenge sought to raise claims that Shirilla received ineffective assistance of counsel, including an argument that her trial lawyers failed to adequately investigate evidence that she suffered from Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS.

Her attorneys have argued that the condition could have caused Shirilla to lose consciousness before the crash and potentially explain why she failed to brake before impact.

WATCH: MACKENZIE SHIRILLA’S FATHER CALLS HER ‘A DUMB 18-YEAR-OLD’ WHILE BERATING POLICE IN BODYCAM VIDEO

The defense previously said the condition was only "cursorily referenced" at trial despite Shirilla and her family allegedly putting her attorneys on notice about it.

The latest court decisions, however, have focused on whether Shirilla's postconviction petition was filed on time rather than the merits of those arguments.

Under Ohio law, a postconviction petition must generally be filed within 365 days after the trial transcript is filed in the court of appeals. The court determined that the relevant transcript was filed Oct. 24, 2023, making the deadline Oct. 23, 2024.

Shirilla filed her petition on Oct. 24, 2024, the 366th day.

Shirilla argued that the clock should have started later, when juvenile bindover transcripts were filed, and also pointed to the 2024 leap year. The appellate court rejected both arguments, finding that the statute refers to the "trial transcript," not supplemental juvenile-hearing transcripts, and that the law provides 365 days, not a calendar year.

IDAHO JUDGE GRANTS BRYAN KOHBERGER TWO HEARINGS NEXT YEAR AS ADMITTED KILLER SEEKS TO WITHDRAW GUILTY PLEA

Her attorneys later asked the Ohio Supreme Court to review the case. The state's highest court declined to accept jurisdiction June 23 before Shirilla's legal team asked the justices to reconsider that decision.

Shirilla's case has received renewed public attention following the release of Netflix's "The Crash."

Shirilla was convicted in 2023 after a bench trial of four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault and two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide.

Prosecutors argued at trial that Shirilla intentionally drove into the building to end her toxic relationship with Russo and that Flanagan was an unintended victim who happened to be in the car.

NEW HAMPSHIRE SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS ADAM MONTGOMERY'S MURDER CONVICTION IN DAUGHTER HARMONY'S DEATH

Evidence presented in the case included surveillance video, vehicle "black box" data and evidence that Shirilla's car was traveling nearly 100 mph without braking before the crash, according to WOIO.

Shirilla has maintained that the crash was not intentional.

Her convictions were upheld on direct appeal in 2024.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Shirilla's attorney for comment.

Fox News Digital's Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.

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Listening to most of the media and Canada’s prime minister, you’d think the U.S. and its northern neighbor were in a full-blown trade war after new tariffs were announced days ago. Au contraire: Anyone who checks the numbers can see this is merely a skirmish.

On Aug. 22, the administration's Section 338 tariffs took effect, at 50% on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, or about 5% of what Canada sells the U.S. Ottawa's answer, effective Sept. 8, will be varying tariffs on roughly $20 billion of American exports to Canada, about 6% of what Canada buys from the U.S.

While tariffs on $40 billion aren’t chump change, they’re a small portion of the roughly $900 billion in products and services that are exchanged across the U.S.-Canadian border annually. Roughly 95% of transactions are proceeding exactly as they did in July.

A POPULAR COCKTAIL HAS A TRUMP TRADE PROBLEM YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT

People should be much more focused on January, because that’s when 50% tariffs hit many more Canadian exports, including cars, trucks and auto parts. Throw in potential Canadian retaliation, and we’re looking at higher tariffs on well over $100 billion of trade between the two countries.

When the artillery joins in like that, we go from a skirmish to a war. However, that doesn’t mean we can brush off these recent developments as insignificant. The current skirmish feels eerily similar to Union and Confederate reconnaissance units encountering each other outside Gettysburg.

‘CAPTAIN CANADA’ FIREBRAND UNLOADS ON TRUMP WITH PROFANE ONE-LINER AS TRADE WAR ESCALATES

What makes this time different is the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Other tariffs had carveouts for USMCA-compliant products. This was extremely important because businesses invested billions of dollars over several years to create supply chains in North America, and they shouldn’t be punished for playing by the rules.

That principle was violated, though not for the first time, with the recent implementation of these Section 338 tariffs, which apply regardless of USMCA qualification and which stack on top of the ordinary rate. Companies that played by the rules are now being punished for complying with a trade agreement that was heralded as "the new gold standard."

WHITE HOUSE EXPOSES ‘TRANSSHIPMENT SCAM’ COSTING US UP TO $26B, POINTS FINGER AT CHINA

This is pulling the rug out from under firms that acted in good faith, and on a large scale. The share of imports from Canada and Mexico claiming USMCA preference climbed from roughly 45% in late 2024 to 86% by February. Federal Reserve economists priced this regulatory compliance at $39 billion to $71 billion per year in manufacturing.

Ironically, some firms that spent years moving some of their production and assembly plants to Ontario now face higher effective tariff rates than some firms that stayed in Shenzhen, China. Certain tariffs that are supposed to serve as leverage for benefiting American production are instead hamstringing it.

TRUMP BET TARIFFS WOULD BRING BACK AMERICAN FACTORY JOBS. NEW REPORT SAYS IT DIDN'T WORK

Consider that an American appliance manufacturer buying Canadian steel pays 50% on that input. The foreign competitor builds the finished washing machine overseas and typically ships it in at a lower rate. Because of how the current tariff regime has been thrown together, an appliance that’s USMCA-compliant can be hit with a tariff higher than an appliance made entirely in China.

If a trade deal is not reached by January, the situation will get even worse. An American automotive assembly plant will pay 50% on Canadian components while a finished Korean car will enter at a lower rate.

CANADA REPORTEDLY SCRAPS JOINT BRIDGE CELEBRATION WITH US AFTER TRUMP RENEWS TARIFF THREAT

President Donald Trump has threatened to take auto parts from no tariff to 50%, slap higher tariffs on medium- and heavy-duty trucks and their components and effectively double the tariff rate on finished cars and light-duty trucks. If that happens, and Canada follows through with its threat to retaliate, then we’ll be in a full-fledged trade war.

That very expensive fate can be avoided, however, if both sides agree to reduce trade barriers and open their respective consumer markets to the other nation’s producers. That’ll reduce manufacturing costs and consumer prices alike through increased efficiency and more competition.

Unfortunately, that’s a tall order because of certain protectionist lobbies in both the U.S. and Canada, especially Ottawa’s notorious dairy lobby which has an outsized influence on its nation’s trade policy. Canada’s cozying up to China and permitting it to abuse country-of-origin provisions are also not helping negotiations.

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It’s important that a deal is reached soon because no one wins in a trade war. Yet not everyone loses equally. Hopefully, Canada realizes it has more to lose than the U.S. and backs down before both sides incur more casualties.

Even if a deal is reached, the U.S. still needs to rationalize its remaining slapdash tariff schedule. Under no circumstances should American-made products face higher effective tariff rates than foreign-made competition. There’s no need to wait on Canada to address that particular issue.

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A Georgia police officer shot and killed a family's beloved pet donkey after officers searched the animal’s pasture in search of a missing child who was later found at a nearby church.

Hannah Israel, 30, said officers entered her family’s property in Rockmart, Polk County without warning at about 12:45 a.m. on Sunday while looking for the missing child when they noticed the baby donkey named HeeHaw.

"They claimed he ran up to them braying and they thought they were in danger and shot and killed him after trying to Taze him," Israel wrote on Facebook. "HeeHaw was shot and killed in his OWN pasture for doing what donkeys do. Alerting to a stranger. There is no way this is legal!"

She vowed to take legal action as she demanded justice for HeeHaw.

POLICE DOG FOLLOWS HIS NOSE TO FIND MISSING AUTISTIC TEEN SCREAMING FOR HELP

"We are heart broken. He was my SON!!" she wrote.

"We miss him so much where is safe?? When my own baby was shot in his own home?" she added in another post.

A photo taken after the shooting showed Israel crying over her pet donkey, as the animal's eyes remained wide open as it lay lifeless on the ground.

"He would normally be standing right over there talking while I'm talking because he thought he could talk like a person could talk," Israel told 11Alive.

"Every time he saw somebody, he would run up and bray," Israel said. "And then do a really goofy sound, and because he loved people, and he thought he was a person. He slept in my bed for the first three months of his life," she added.

The Cedartown Police Department said the officer who shot the beloved baby donkey has been placed on paid administrative leave.

"The Cedartown Police Department has turned over the investigation of the animal shooting to the Georgia Department of Agriculture Law Enforcement Division for investigation and placed the officer involved on paid administrative leave while this investigation is ongoing," the department said in a statement.

Cedartown Police Chief Jamie Newsom said body camera footage exists and he has viewed it, according to 11Alive.

"That search took them to the incident location where this very unfortunate and heartbreaking event occurred," Newsom said, according to the outlet.

Newsom said he understands the heartbreak that the family and the community is facing after the donkey's death.

"They're members of the human family, and I am too, and heartbroken," he said.

DOG SAVED FROM ISIS BY ARMY VETERAN 'KIDNAPPED' FROM FAMILY YARD BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES

The Georgia Department of Agriculture's Law Enforcement Division was at Elsberry Farm on Monday investigating HeeHaw's death.

Israel created a GoFundMe to help cover legal costs related to HeeHaw’s death. She said any donations left over would go toward the farm, care of the animals and a future HeeHaw foundation. She has raised more than $113,000 as of Tuesday morning.

"My bottle baby donkey 'HeeHaw' was killed in his own pasture on Saturday night by trespassing cops," she wrote on the fundraiser. "He was a loved member of our family and did many petting zoos and made many people smile."

She said she hired a lawyer but stressed that donations left over after legal costs would not be used for personal needs.

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FIRST ON FOX: A multi-agency operation in Arizona’s Yuma Sector led to the arrest of 95 illegal alien truck drivers earlier this month, striking at the heart of human and drug smuggling operations at the U.S. southern border.

All 95 drivers had acquired state-issued commercial driver’s licenses; 76 from California, six from New York and the rest from a handful of other states, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The apprehensions continue to demonstrate the high volume of narcotics and human trafficking smuggling operations that are alive and well at the border — even as immigration numbers have plummeted in recent months.

CHAOTIC BORDER CHASE ENDS WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS FOUND CRAMMED IN SEMITRUCK SLEEPING AREA

"We are committed to protecting our citizens from all international threats, whether that is from unlicensed or untrained drivers, or transnational criminal organizations engaged in human or drug trafficking," Acting Chief Patrol Agent Dustin Caudle said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

Since the end of 2024, border crossings have plummeted, going from over 144,000 encounters in December 2024 to just 33,000 in July.

Even so, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported several high-profile smuggling attempts that have sought to bring weapons, narcotics and humans across the U.S. border.

Earlier this year, CBP released reports on how it had prevented a car carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher from crossing the border, detected dozens of immigrants crammed into a semi-truck and even detained a boat off the coast of the Dominican Republic with the help of a Black Hawk helicopter.

TRUMP ADMIN INVESTIGATING 75 TRUCK DRIVER SCHOOLS FOR FRAUD, HELPING NON-CITIZENS GET LICENSES

Trucking, in particular, has been a key way in which smugglers have sought to bring weapons and humans into the country.

According to CBP, the bust earlier this month, which took place between Aug. 10 and 14, also stopped two human-smuggling events, resulting in the arrest of four smugglers and 17 smuggled aliens. Additionally, agents seized 74 pounds of methamphetamine and 169 pounds of marijuana. In total, authorities arrested 143 suspects from 18 countries.

To prevent schemes like these, the Department of Transportation (DOT) is finalizing a rule to prevent unqualified drivers from obtaining CDLs.

If implemented, the rule would limit CDLs to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 nonimmigrant status holders — types of visas with more stringent vetting requirements.

The rule would also prevent an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) as a way to prove eligibility, citing lax reporting and scrutiny on their approvals.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TRUCKERS ACCUSED OF MOWING DOWN AMERICANS IGNITE FURY OVER LOOPHOLES UNLEASHING DEADLY ROADS

"Moving forward, unqualified foreign drivers will be unable to get a license to operate an 80,000-pound big rig," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a press release about the rule.

"Under President Trump’s leadership, we are putting the safety of the driving public first," Duffy continued. "From enforcing English language standards to holding fraudulent carriers accountable, we will continue to attack this crisis on our roads head-on."

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