Florida will coordinate with federal immigration authorities to crack down on illegal immigration at state commercial vehicle checkpoints, officials announced Monday.

The announcement comes in the wake of the fatal Aug. 12 Florida Turnpike motor vehicle accident in which an undocumented immigrant behind the wheel of a semitruck collided with a minivan and killed three people.

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The state will be working with federal partners to ensure commercial vehicle drivers are proficient in English and are in the country legally, Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson announced. He also said the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services will be adding a new interdiction, or inspection, station, the 24th across the state, and several new pullover lanes across the state’s northern border as commercial vehicles enter the state.

“If you come through these stations and you are an illegal or breaking the law, you will be handed over to our local or federal partners. If you are driving a commercial vehicle and you are not proficient in English, we will comply with the president’s executive order,” Simpson said, referring to President Donald Trump’s April executive order on enforcing trucking laws, including English language proficiency requirements for commercial vehicle drivers.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy launched an investigation into both the driver and the carrier company, White Hawk Carriers, involved in the deadly Florida Turnpike crash last week. He wrote on X, “If you can’t speak our national language or read our road signs, you are not qualified to drive a truck. That’s why in May @POTUS and I took action to actually upgrade the penalty for failing English requirements.”

Simpson, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Enforcement and Removal Operations Executive Associate Director Garrett Ripa, and several law enforcement officials held the press conference at one of the truck inspection points run by the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Live Oak, Florida.

“If we catch them here, we can certainly prevent those types of accidents that happened on the turnpike the other day,” Simpson said. “Our goal is to continue to ramp up our encounters here at the interdiction stations and make sure we’re getting these guys off the road.”

Simpson also said the department is adding new X-ray machinery at the inspection stations to scan commercial trucks as they pass through the stations.

Uthmeier said the state’s commercial vehicle initiatives are already having an impact on its illegal immigration crackdown, as authorities caught an undocumented immigrant Sunday night.

“Last night, we saw another example,” Uthmeier said. “We were able to arrest an individual who was in the country illegally who was driving a commercial vehicle in Bay County. The individual, Roberto Carlos Vergara, has been arrested and is now under an ICE hold.”

Uthmeier told reporters during Monday’s press conference that the person “will be deported back to where he came from.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced in early August that Florida authorities have arrested nearly 3,000 undocumented immigrants, 500 of whom had criminal records, this year.

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DeSantis has unveiled several immigration enforcement operations in partnership with federal immigration authorities under the Trump administration. He announced that state and federal law enforcement officers arrested nearly 200 undocumented immigrants in the first week of an operation to thwart illegal immigration in the Florida panhandle.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s requests for further comment.