MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A new partnership between the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has led to 82 truck drivers being detained over immigration issues in less than six weeks, prompting fresh concerns from immigrant advocates and civil rights groups about racial profiling and the criminalization of work. The effort, announced by Gov. Kay Ivey, folds federal immigration agents into routine commercial vehicle enforcement along rural interstate corridors, signaling a more aggressive alignment between state police powers and federal immigration enforcement in a Deep South state with a long history of anti-immigrant policy fights.
State officials say the initiative began Oct. 27 as ALEA’s Motor Carrier Safety Unit conducted inspections on “high-crash rural interstate corridors” where truck traffic is heavy and safety risks are elevated. Since then, troopers have referred roughly 242 people encountered during commercial vehicle inspections to ICE for immigration checks, and ICE has detained 82 of them, including 12 who lacked any driver’s license and the rest who held licenses from outside Alabama.
Most of the detentions occurred during two “strike force” operations running Oct. 27–30 and Nov. 16–18, and state officials say ICE personnel are now being integrated into routine commercial vehicle enforcement when available. The announcement comes as the Department of Homeland Security touts a broader national crackdown on truck drivers who lack lawful status, following high-profile crashes in other states that have intensified political pressure for high-visibility immigration enforcement.
Ivey has framed the Alabama initiative as a highway safety measure aimed at “illegal operators” and “bad actors” in trucking, and trucking industry allies have echoed that language in calling for tougher enforcement against drivers who violate immigration or cabotage rules. But immigrant-rights and civil liberties advocates argue that blending roadside safety checks with immigration screening blurs the line between traffic enforcement and deportation, heightening the risk that Latino, Black and other minority drivers will be singled out based on appearance, accent or national origin rather than driving behavior.
Alabama’s move also lands in a state that only a decade ago passed one of the country’s most sweeping anti-immigrant laws, a measure that was later scaled back after court challenges and economic blowback. For many immigrant families, workers and mixed-status households, the new trucker-focused operations reinforce a perception that state leaders are again leaning into fear-based politics and punitive enforcement instead of supporting pathways to status, worker protections and road safety strategies that do not depend on federal immigration databases.