California is pulling 17,000 commercial driver's licenses given to immigrants. This comes following the discovery that the expiration dates on the licenses had passed the drivers' legally allotted time to stay in the U.S.

The federal government says California issued them illegally, while the state says the feds are overreaching. Now, some people in the trucking industry say they're the ones caught in the middle.

"I think the DMV of California messed it up, not those guys," said Parmander Dayal, former trucker and the owner of the 99 truck wash and smog check near Yuba City.

Dayal says he's already seeing licenses pulled.

"Yeah, obviously, I'm going to lose some customers. There's a lot of guys that will probably lose their licenses in the Yuba City area, too. So it's going to have a huge impact," he said.

The announcement comes on the heels of two crashes involving drivers from the Northern California area.

Raman Dhillon, the CEO of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, says the blame shouldn't fall on all the drivers.

"The cause of the problem is that your schools, your DMVs, they're issuing licenses wrongfully. Schools are training people wrongfully. There's a lot of factors involved. With one click, you take away licenses from all these people and disrupting the whole thing is not a wise decision," said Dhillon.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy put out a press release this week stating in part, "The California DMV has admitted to illegally issuing 17,000 non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) to dangerous foreign drivers."

Governor Gavin Newsom's office says the revocation is not due to dangerous foreign drivers, but due to inconsistency with California law. It was discovered that these license expiration dates went past the drivers' legally allotted time to stay in the United States. 

"Once again, Sean 'Road Rules' Duffy fails to share the truth - spreading easily disproven falsehoods in a sad and desperate attempt to please his dear leader," Newsom's office said in a statement. 

"Doing it like this, not everyone is a culprit. Not everyone is a wrong person," said Dhillon. "Some people are in the business five, 10 years and they invested in trucks, bought the houses, bought all kinds of stuff with it."

The U.S. Department of Transportation says notices have been issued stating their license no longer meets federal requirements and will expire in 60 days.