Reporter Confronts Sean Duffy With Stats On ‘Illegal Immigrants’ Causing Accidents: It’s ‘1% of the Issue’

A reporter confronted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy during a Monday press conference where he announced his department’s crackdown on truck driving schools that issued commercial driver’s licenses to non-English speaking drivers.

During the announcement that included Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Duffy said his department “has spent the last year-and-a-half strengthening the rules of the road and removing dangerous foreign drivers” from the American trucking industry.

A reporter asked Duffy, “In this news briefing, I’ve done some research…But according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, in 2025 only 17 foreign-born drivers holding immigrant or non-documented CDLs were responsible in fatal accidents. Less than one percent of all the fatal accidents recorded as opposed to to 22-and-a-half percent of drivers involving crashes had no DCL at all. The slant here has been strongly about illegals, foreign drivers, but accounts, according to the DOT stats I see, for one percent of the issue.”

Duffy answered that the DOT stats the reporter cited were “not created by Trump 45 or 47. It goes back decades.”

“Now, you’ve assumed that these are all illegals,” Duffy said. “Some of them are, some of them are not…No, this does have to do with those who come in the country illegally. But it also has to do with people who are in the country lawfully but they are not being trained.”

Mullin then stepped to the microphone to dress down the reporter.

“Let me talk about that one percent. Are you saying one percent is okay? ‘Cause that one percent is what caused this right here,” Mullin said, pointing to an accident photo.

“One percent is one too many, I said this in my remarks. Every single illegal that maims or kill an individual is 100% preventible. I’m trying to prevent every one of them. I don’t care is it’s a fraction of one percent, I’m coming after you. I’m removing you from the road, because it should never take place. Every death at a hands of an illegal is one too many. So, you make the percentage about one percent? Are you willing to take that one percent if it was your daughter? Then one percent’s plenty, John. One percent is plenty. A fraction of one percent is plenty. Zero-point-one percent of one percent is zero-point-one percent too many.”

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

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