A man accused of stealing a Maryland State Highway Administration tow truck and leading police on a wild, high-speed chase on Friday was in the United States illegally.
Cesar Flavio Lanuza, a Nicaraguan citizen, led authorities on a wild chase in which he allegedly hit other cars and police cruisers before stopping in Silver Spring, Fox DC reported.
He was arrested and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged a detainer request on him with the Montgomery County detention center.
"Cesar Flavio Lanuza is an unlawfully present citizen and national of Nicaragua," James Convington, spokesperson for ICE'S Enforcement Removal Operations in Baltimore, told Fox News Digital in a statement.
Covington said Lanuza will be transferred to the detention center once he's released from the hospital.
Darius Reeves, the Baltimore field office director for the immigration agency, told Fox DC that Lanuza is "of interest to ICE."
"Once the state is done with their business with him, we would love for him to be brought into our custody," he told the news outlet.
The detainer filed on Lanuza is part of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations, which aims to arrest and remove individuals who ICE says undermine public safety and have broken federal immigration laws. ICE has criticized Montgomery County for refusing to honor immigration detainer requests in the past.
"They shouldn't be in the country simply because they're violating our immigration laws," Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told the news outlet. "But clearly, once someone has taken that additional step and poses a danger to society at large, then the local jurisdictions, in the interest of protecting the people in their own communities, should be more than willing to cooperate."
Fox News Digital has reached out to the detention center.
