EXCLUSIVE: Pennsylvania lawmakers warned Harrisburg officials of a potential crisis on their hands before Monday’s arrest of an Uzbek illegal immigrant trucker in Kansas who held a PennDOT commercial driver’s license (CDL).

Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee chairman Jarrett Coleman shared a letter with Fox News Digital that he sent just days earlier to PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll asking for answers to how illegal immigrants were receiving CDL licenses despite stated rigorous identity checks.

Coleman, R-Allentown, said Monday’s incident was “deeply disturbing but not surprising” and another example of the Shapiro administration “prioritiz[ing] political optics over public safety.”

He said that Pennsylvanians deserve accountability in situations like this and that if the administration will not provide public answers, then there is a “much bigger problem on our hands.”

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“Public safety is not negotiable,” he said. “Ten days ago, I and several colleagues formally requested answers from PennDOT about what safeguards they have in place to prevent individuals who are in this country illegally, and in some cases have criminal records, from obtaining CDLs.”

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The letter had been prompted by reports that a dozen illegal immigrants netted in an October bust of about 80 noncitizen truckers in Oklahoma were issued their licenses by Harrisburg.

“Governor Shapiro is quick to jump in front of cameras and tout his leadership, but when it comes to answering basic questions about how his administration is protecting Pennsylvania drivers, we get silence,” Coleman said.

“This isn’t just bureaucratic delay. It’s stonewalling. And it’s dangerous.”

Coleman led the letter, which was cosigned by Sens. Doug Mastriano, R-Gettysburg, Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-Dallastown, and Dawn Keefer, R-Dillsburg.

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It requested Carroll provide more than a dozen datapoints, including whether PennDOT has even reviewed the files of the CDL holders arrested by ICE since October, and whether those drivers were properly verified at the time of issuance.

Carroll was also asked whether PennDOT is using required federal “systematic alien verification for entitlements” to verify immigration status, and whether it was complying with a directive from USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy to halt all issuances of “non-domiciled CDLs.”

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Since the letter was sent, a federal judge rebuked Duffy and overturned his suspension of license issuance.

Coleman also asked Carroll about any internal audits, oversight mechanism, corrective action plan, or assessments of public safety risks from their current modus operandi.

A spokeswoman for Carroll confirmed PennDOT received Coleman’s letter and is in the process of responding.

She assured that whenever “non-citizen applicants apply for a CDL in Pennsylvania, PennDOT follows applicable federal and state processes, reviewing the necessary immigration and naturalization documents and confirming the non-citizen’s legal status in real-time using [DHS’] SAVE database before issuing a license — if the applicant clears the SAVE process, which confirms the applicant is residing in the U.S. under legal status, and successfully meets all other criteria, a license is issued.

“PennDOT completes these two checks to confirm legal status with the federal government every time it issues a license to a non-citizen,” the spokeswoman said.

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Carroll, a former state lawmaker from former President Joe Biden’s home county of Lackawanna, said he has the “greatest level of faith in our driver’s license and motor vehicle folks” when it comes to properly verifying “substantial documentation” required for REAL IDs and licenses.

Later Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Republican Party issued its own demand for Shapiro to speak out on the growing issue.

PAGOP Chairman Greg Rothman, a state senator from Cumberland County, called it “not just a policy failure [but] a national security breach right here in Pennsylvania.

“How in the world did someone with terrorist ties pass every check to get behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler in our state?”

Rothman said the Uzbek national, Akhror Bozorov, also obtained REAL ID verification from PennDOT.

“The people who signed off on this need to be found, fired, and Governor Shapiro must answer for this.”

In that regard, Shapiro’s office hit back at critics and suggested they instead question the Trump administration about the situation.

“If officials are concerned about this, they should redirect their attention to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who manages the federal database that is checked before any Pennsylvania licenses are issued to non-citizens,” said Rosie Lapowsky, a spokeswoman for Shapiro.

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“The PAGOP is formally requesting that federal and state oversight authorities launch a full investigation into the decision-making process that allowed Bozorov to receive a CDL,” the PAGOP added in a statement.

Bozorov’s license—an image of which was obtained by Fox News Digital—listed a ZIP code corresponding to Philadelphia’s Somerton neighborhood, a suburban-style area in the city’s northeast once home to figures like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and, more recently, an increasing number of Russian and Arabic residents.

In response to Bozorov’s initial arrest, PennDOT spokeswoman Alexis Campbell told Fox News Digital that “when non-citizen applicants appear at a Driver License Center in Pennsylvania, PennDOT reviews immigration and naturalization documents, which are confirmed in real-time against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) website before issuing any driver’s license.”

WASHINGTON — The House is poised to vote overwhelmingly on Tuesday to demand the Justice Department release all documents tied to its investigation of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

President Trump, who initially worked to thwart the vote before reversing course on Sunday night, has said he will sign the measure if it reaches his desk. For that to happen, the bill will also need to pass the Senate, which could consider the measure as soon as Tuesday night.

Republicans for months pushed back on the release of the Epstein files, joining Trump in claiming the Epstein issue was being brought up by Democrats as a way to distract from Republicans’ legislative successes.

But that all seismically shifted Sunday when Trump had a drastic reversal and urged Republicans to vote to release the documents, saying there was “nothing to hide.”

“It’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The reversal came days after 20,000 documents from Epstein’s private estate were released by lawmakers in the House Oversight Committee. The files referenced Trump more than 1,000 times.

In private emails, Epstein wrote that Trump had “spent hours” at his house and “knew about the girls,” a revelation that reignited the push in Congress for further disclosures.

Trump has continued to deny wrongdoing in the Epstein saga despite opposing the release of files from the federal probe into the conduct of his former friend, a convicted sex offender and alleged sex trafficker. He died by suicide while in federal custody in 2019.

Many members of Trump’s MAGA base have demanded the files be released, convinced they contain revelations about powerful people involved in Epstein’s abuse of what is believed to be more than 200 women and girls. Tension among his base spiked when Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in July that an “Epstein client list” did not exist, after saying in February that the list was sitting on her desk awaiting review. She later said she was referring to the Epstein files more generally.

Trump’s call to release the files now highlights how he is trying to prevent an embarrassing defeat as a growing number of Republicans in the House have joined Democrats to vote for the legislation in recent days.

The Epstein files have been a hugely divisive congressional fight in recent months, with Democrats pushing the release, but Republican congressional leaders largely refusing to take the votes. The issue even led to a rift within the MAGA movement, and Trump to cut ties with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia who had long been an ardent support of the president.

“Watching this actually turn into a fight has ripped MAGA apart,” Greene said at a news conference Tuesday in reference to the resistance to release the files.

Democrats have accused Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of delaying the swearing-in of Rep. Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, because she promised to cast the final vote needed to move a so-called discharge petition, which would force a vote on the floor. Johnson has denied those claims.

If the House and Senate do vote to release the files, all eyes will turn to the Department of Justice, and what exactly it will choose to publicly release.

“The fight, the real fight, will happen after that,” Greene said. “The real test will be: Will the Department of Justice release the files? Or will it all remain tied up in an investigation?”

Several Epstein survivors joined lawmakers at the news conference to talk about how important the vote was for them.

Haley Robson, one of the survivors, questioned Trump’s resistance to the vote even now as he supports it.

“While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files, and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill, I can’t help to be skeptical of what the agenda is,” Robson said.

If signed into law by Trump, the bill would prohibit the attorney general, Bondi, from withholding, delaying or redacting “any record, document, communication, or investigative material on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”

But caveats in the bill could provide Trump and Bondi with loopholes to keep records related to the president concealed.

In the spring, FBI Director Kash Patel directed a Freedom of Information Act team to comb through the entire trove of files from the investigation, and ordered it to redact references to Trump, citing his status as a private citizen with privacy protections when the probe first launched in 2006, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, said the Trump administration will be forced to release the files with an act of Congress.

“They will be breaking the law if they do not release these files,” he said.