Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe on Friday, November 13, 2026, sent a formal letter to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker demanding an immediate review and overhaul of Illinois commercial driver licensing procedures, four days after a semi-truck crash on U.S. Highway 71 in Kansas City, Missouri, killed a mother and her two young sons. Kehoe shared the letter publicly in a post on X, making the dispute between the two governors a national argument over who should be allowed to hold a commercial driver's licence (CDL) in the United States.
Source: CDLLife
"Americans deserve to know that the drivers sharing the road with their families are legally authorized to be here and fully qualified to operate heavy commercial equipment safely," Kehoe wrote. "In Missouri, we have strict protocols in place to ensure proper verification and highway safety. Today, I sent a letter to Governor Pritzker calling on him to immediately review and overhaul Illinois's commercial licensing procedures to ensure thorough vetting." He added: "When a state fails to vet applicants before handing over the keys to a commercial tractor-trailer, the consequences do not stop at the state line." Pritzker's office had not issued a comment on the letter as of Friday afternoon, CDLLife reported.
Source: Governor Mike Kehoe on X / CDLLife
The crash that started this fight — the earlier development
This is a follow-up to a crash Awaaz Punjab reported earlier this week. On Monday, November 9, 2026, traffic slowed to a stop on northbound U.S. 71 in Kansas City, near East 19th Street. Prosecutors say a Volvo semi-truck driven by Eldar Skander, 39, of Chicago continued at a high rate of speed and struck a black Honda Odyssey minivan, triggering a chain-reaction crash involving several other vehicles. Olga Sorbalo, 35, and her two sons, aged 8 and 4, were killed. The family, from Vancouver, Washington, was heading to the airport to fly home after visiting relatives, according to a family fundraiser and relatives who spoke to reporters. Sorbalo's husband and their youngest child survived, the fundraiser said. Prosecutors said six other people were taken to a nearby hospital with serious injuries.
Source: Fox News via US Times Mirror
On Tuesday, the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office charged Skander with three counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors said investigators found no evidence that Skander applied the semi's emergency brakes before the collision, and that a tablet open to the YouTube application was found on the floorboard of the truck. Jail records show a $150,000 bond and an immigration detainer. CDLLife, citing KCTV5, reported that Skander declined to be interviewed by investigators. All of these are allegations in a criminal complaint: Skander is presumed innocent until proven guilty in court.
Source: Jackson County Prosecutor's Office via Fox News
Washington has opened its own investigation
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on X on Thursday that Skander's non-domiciled commercial driver's licence was issued by Illinois in March 2025. Duffy said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has identified the trucking company that put Skander behind the wheel and has launched an investigation both into that company and into how Illinois issued him the CDL. A non-domiciled CDL is a commercial licence issued to a driver who is legally present in the United States but is not a citizen or permanent resident of the state — or country — that issued it, and such licences have been at the centre of a federal enforcement drive all year.
Source: Secretary Sean Duffy on X via Fox News
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in its own post on X that Skander is a Ukrainian national who, according to the agency, entered the United States unlawfully and was released into the country in 2023. ICE called the three deaths "tragic and preventable." Those immigration claims are the agency's account and are attributed to ICE; Skander's immigration case is separate from the state manslaughter prosecution in Jackson County.
Source: ICE on X via Fox News
Illinois was already on notice — the February federal audit
Kehoe's letter lands on ground the federal government had already marked out. On February 17, 2026, Transportation Secretary Duffy announced that an FMCSA audit of Illinois's non-domiciled CDL program had found nearly 20 percent of the licences sampled had been issued illegally — including licences that remained valid long after a driver's lawful presence in the U.S. had expired, and licences issued without Illinois first verifying lawful presence. FreightWaves reported that the audit sampled 150 driver records. The U.S. Department of Transportation gave Illinois 30 days to come into compliance and revoke the illegally issued licences, or risk losing $128 million in federal highway funding, and demanded the state pause new non-domiciled CDL issuance, identify and revoke non-compliant licences, and run an internal audit of how the errors happened. Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias responded at the time that the state's CDL practices were "substantially compliant" with federal requirements and that his office would review FMCSA's findings.
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation / FreightWaves
Why this matters far beyond one crash
U.S. 71 through Kansas City is part of the freight spine of the Midwest, and Interstate corridors like it are worked every day by immigrant truck drivers — including a large Punjabi diaspora workforce in long-haul trucking across the United States. Every fatal crash involving a non-domiciled CDL now triggers two separate debates at once: a criminal question about one driver's conduct on one night, which the Jackson County case will decide, and a systems question about how states verify the drivers they licence and how carriers vet the drivers they hire, which the FMCSA investigation and the Kehoe–Pritzker exchange are now fighting over. Drivers who hold lawful licences and clean records say, in industry forums, that each such case brings tighter checks, longer waits and more suspicion onto the whole immigrant driver workforce — while safety advocates argue the February audit's numbers show the checks were overdue. Both claims are now playing out in public, between two governors, with a grieving family at the centre of the original case.
Governor Pritzker's office had not commented on Kehoe's letter as of Friday afternoon. The FMCSA investigation into the carrier that employed Skander and into Illinois's issuance of his March 2025 CDL is under way, with no findings yet released. Skander remains jailed on $150,000 bond with an ICE detainer while the Jackson County manslaughter case proceeds; his licence and immigration status will be decided in separate proceedings from the criminal trial.
Awaaz Punjab will update this story when Illinois responds to the letter or when the FMCSA releases findings from its investigation. The charges against Eldar Skander are allegations; he has not been convicted of any offence in connection with the November 9 crash.