15-State Operation Guardian Sweep Arrests 40-Plus Foreign Truck Drivers
A 72-hour, 15-state sweep led by Oklahoma arrested more than 40 foreign truck drivers with removal orders. Where it ran and what carriers should expect.
Troopers in Oklahoma and 14 other states, working with federal immigration agents, arrested more than 40 foreign truck drivers during a 72-hour enforcement push Oct. 26-28, officials said. The operation, called Operation Guardian, picked up 230 undocumented immigrants in total and targeted foreign drivers holding unauthorized commercial driver’s licenses, Transport Topics reported.
Officials described it as the first multistate sweep of its size. Running checks in many states at once was meant to stop drivers from routing around a single state’s enforcement.
Why Oklahoma pulled in other states
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol has worked under an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than a year and began commercial vehicle immigration checks in September 2025. Troopers have concentrated on eastbound freight on Interstate 40 and at the state’s ports of entry.
Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton said state analysts saw social media posts warning drivers to detour around Oklahoma as soon as troopers started checks at the ports. “Our goal was to stop diverting,” he said. So the state lined up simultaneous enforcement with Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas, covering routes from the Canadian border through the Midwest and South to the Gulf Coast.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Tipton announced the results at Melton Truck Lines in Tulsa.
Who was targeted
Russell Hott, an ICE assistant director, said the agency’s CDL enforcement focuses on drivers with final orders of removal, people who went through immigration court, were ordered to leave and stayed. Officials said the drivers arrested came from countries including Armenia, Brazil, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Peru and Ukraine.
Stops also led to arrests on outstanding felony warrants and in cases of domestic assault, impaired driving and suspected human trafficking. In one case, authorities said, a man from Honduras stopped in an allegedly stolen vehicle assaulted an Oklahoma trooper, leaving the trooper with a dislocated elbow and a broken arm, and ran. He was found hiding in a tree after a four-hour search and allegedly had illegal drugs on him.
Indiana’s numbers
Most participating state police agencies did not release their results. Indiana State Police did, saying troopers worked secondary roads and bypass routes that drivers use to avoid interstate enforcement.
- Just over 500 commercial motor vehicles inspected
- 85 vehicles placed out of service
- 51 drivers taken off the road
- 8 drivers placed out of service for English-language proficiency violations
- 28 people arrested on 36 criminal charges
- 124.5 pounds of cannabis, 6.1 grams of methamphetamine and 1.3 grams of fentanyl seized
What it means for carriers and brokers
Tipton said Oklahoma will keep running these operations and will go after the trucking companies and brokers that put unauthorized drivers in trucks, along with the drivers themselves. For carriers, that means the license status of every driver they dispatch, and every carrier a broker hands a load to, is now part of what troopers look at during a stop.
Drivers on bypass routes are not out of reach either: Indiana’s results came from exactly those roads. Oklahoma has not said when its next coordinated operation will run.
Source: Transport Topics
