More than a year ago Oklahoma ran its first targeted commercial vehicle operation on Interstate 40 near Elk City. Each time an operation started, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says, traffic online told drivers to divert around the state. Operation Guardian was built to close that detour. From October 26 to 28, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and state and local law enforcement in 15 states ran the same enforcement at the same time; Indiana State Police said its part targeted secondary and bypass routes. On November 2, Mullin announced the results at the Tulsa headquarters of Melton Truck Lines: 1,005 commercial vehicles inspected, more than 230 arrests of people in the country without legal status, and more than 40 of them holding a commercial driver's license. It is not the largest enforcement number of the past week: Arkansas, itself one of the 15 Guardian states, reported 393 out-of-service orders in a separate 48-hour operation that overlapped it. What is different is the design, built around the detour, and Mullin's promise that it will be repeated throughout the country.
What happened, by the numbers
According to the DHS release, Operation Guardian ran for 72 hours across Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas. ICE worked with state and local partners; Indiana State Police said in its own statement that the operation 'targeted secondary and bypass routes to eliminate avenues criminals typically use to evade high-level enforcement activities on major interstate corridors.' The result DHS reported is more than 230 arrests, including more than 40 CDL holders. Tulsa station News On 6 reported that officials at the press conference put the inspection count at 1,005 commercial vehicles, and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol listed people with outstanding felony warrants, a suspected human trafficking case involving a vehicle with six occupants including a juvenile, and a stolen-vehicle stop in which the driver broke a trooper's arm and fled, triggering a four-hour manhunt, among what the operation turned up.
The press conference, held at Melton Truck Lines on November 2, brought together Mullin, Melton CEO Bob Peterson and President Robert Ragan, ICE's Russell Hott, Oklahoma Department of Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton, Colonel Freeman Martin of the Texas Department of Public Safety and Colonel Joe Williams of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Mullin and Tipton said the people arrested came from more than 19 countries, listing among them Armenia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Georgia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Mongolia, Peru, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Venezuela. 'It's not just Mexico,' they added, according to KJRH. 'It's from all over the world,' Mullin said.
Tipton gave the longer Oklahoma arc. Governor Kevin Stitt directed him to design the program in November 2024. When the state ran its first targeted commercial vehicle operation on I-40 near Elk City more than a year ago, News On 6 reported Tipton saying, more than half of the stopped trucks involved untrained drivers in the country illegally. Over the past year Oklahoma has removed 710 'illegal' CDL holders from its roads, he said, and the share found at stops has since fallen. 'The good news is we are seeing the numbers decline,' Tipton said. 'Now we're down to where it's a much lower percentage. So that's good news to us, but we're not going to let up.'
When we would start the operation, we would start seeing the traffic online, and they would start telling drivers to divert around Oklahoma. We had 14 other states that cooperated in the three-day operation, and we expect to do this throughout the country over and over again.
What DHS did not say
The release did not break the arrests down by state, did not say which states issued the licenses of the 40-plus CDL holders, and did not say how many of them were driving a commercial vehicle when they were stopped. News On 6 reported, without naming the official, that 40 of those arrested were 'actively operating commercial trucks without proper legal authorization or valid credentials'; the federal release says only 'more than 40 CDL holders,' and FreightWaves noted that DHS did not say how many were driving when stopped. The release also did not say whether anyone was charged with licensing fraud or any other CDL-related offense, as opposed to being held on immigration grounds. The two cases DHS described in detail, a Honduran national driving a vehicle reported stolen in Texas who assaulted a trooper on I-35, and a Mexican national driving seven people including an unaccompanied child on I-40, were not described as CDL cases. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol's own list describes a six-occupant suspected trafficking stop with a juvenile; whether that is the same stop as the federal release's seven-occupant case, the two accounts do not say.
The cumulative figures are easy to misread. DHS says that from January 20, 2025, to October 28, 2026, ICE made 4,795 CDL-related arrests nationwide and 1,233 arrests involving CDL holders. That is the figure behind the 'more than 1,200' CDL holders that Hott cited in Tulsa; it covers 21 months, not three days. Operation Guardrail, a separate ICE operation launched September 25 and aimed at commercial vehicles operating in violation of federal law, had produced 303 arrests as of October 29. DHS did not say whether the Guardian arrests are included in either total. And the 710 figure is Oklahoma's count over the past year, not the state's share of last week's operation.
Carriers and brokers were in the same sentence as drivers
Asked by Tulsa station KJRH how officials handle the companies that hire these drivers, Mullin answered that the agency already has. 'At some point, if we see repeat offenders, that are constantly hiring these drivers, or you see loads that are constantly brokering with these guys, we will eventually go after them and we have done that,' he said. DHS officials also said that when a driver is taken off the road, law enforcement notifies not only the carrier that hired the driver but the owner of the cargo. 'Not only do we inform the driver or the company that hired the driver, but the cargo that's being shipped, we'll actually inform them as well,' Mullin said. 'It's in everybody's best interest not to have these individuals on the road.'
Mullin repeated that legal permanent residents and work visa holders remain eligible for a commercial license if they pass the same tests, while criticizing New York and California for issuing credentials without adequate verification. Tipton's complaint, drivers who 'can't read and speak English,' points at the federal driver qualification rule (49 CFR 391.11(b)(2)), which requires a driver to read and speak English well enough to converse with the public, understand traffic signs, respond to official inquiries and make entries on reports; roadside, it is the CVSA out-of-service criteria that turn that rule into a parked truck.
In an Overdrive Radio interview published the same day, FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs described his agency's side of the cleanup as dumping trucking's 'garbage,' the fraudulent actors who hijack carriers' identities and freight. Guardian is the immigration side of that push; the FMCSA side runs through state licensing agencies and the agency's own registries, and Barrs has said about 1,000 improperly issued non-domiciled CDLs a month are coming off the rolls.
What a stop on a bypass route checks now
Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers now hold ICE credentials under a 287(g) agreement, so a stop that begins as a commercial vehicle inspection can end with an immigration arrest without waiting for a federal agent. Add the English-proficiency check that CVSA criteria turn into an out-of-service order on the spot, and the state license reviews that have been downgrading non-domiciled CDLs since the 2025 emergency rule, and a license that passed a hiring check in the spring is not guaranteed to pass a roadside check in November.
What a small carrier or broker should do before the next one
Mullin said the sweep will be repeated; here is the paperwork that decides how it goes
Pull a fresh motor vehicle record on every driver and read the license class and status line, not just the expiration date; a state downgrade is recorded there, and drivers do not always volunteer it.
For any driver on a non-domiciled CDL, match the license to the work authorization document it was issued against and calendar both expiration dates; states tie the license term to the authorization.
Document an English-proficiency check in the driver qualification file the way an inspector would run it: a conversation, a few road signs, an inquiry answered without a translation app.
Brokers: ask the carrier how it verifies driver eligibility and keep the answer; DHS says cargo owners are informed when a driver is pulled, and Mullin said repeat hiring is what gets a company looked at.
Tell dispatch that bypass routes are no longer a workaround: Indiana State Police said its Guardian effort targeted secondary and bypass routes specifically.
If a driver is detained on the road, know in advance who recovers the truck and the load; DHS says the cargo owner is informed by law enforcement, so the shipper may know before you do.
There is a fair argument on the other side, and it is not only political. DHS's own numbers do not separate licensing fraud from immigration status: a driver with a validly issued license and an expired work permit and a driver with a license bought from a diploma mill end up in the same 'more than 40.' The agency's language, 'illegal aliens' issued licenses by 'sanctuary states,' puts the blame on state DMVs, but the federal rule that let states issue non-domiciled CDLs stood for years before the 2025 emergency rule changed it. And an operation announced from a trucking company's headquarters is a news event; the license-by-license review that FMCSA says is running at about 1,000 downgrades a month is the slow part. What is not in dispute is the direction: 14 neighboring states ran the operation with Oklahoma instead of catching its overflow, the cargo owner is informed, and more operations have been promised.
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