Federal immigration agents finally nabbed an illegal migrant trucker years after he allegedly drove the wrong way on a highway and killed an American citizen.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in March arrested Dawood Hussain, a Pakistani national accused of killing a Maryland father of two in a horrific 2023 highway crash, according to information shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Hussain was operating a tractor-trailer when he allegedly drove in the opposite direction along a Pennsylvania highway and collided with another vehicle.
“Illegal aliens should not be operating 80,000-pound tractor-trailers on American roads,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesman Matthew Tragesser said in a statement obtained by the DCNF. “This tragedy, like many others, was completely preventable.”
Disregarding a wrong-way sign and a one-way indicator sign, Hussain drove his big rig onto I-83 south and accelerated to 44mph northbound on a southbound lane in October 2023, according to security camera footage taken at the time. The illegal migrant ultimately smashed head-on into a vehicle driven by Hendry Tamarez Nunez, causing Nunez’s car to spin onto a guardrail, fall down an embankment and strike a tree, killing him before authorities arrived.
Dawood Hussain. Image courtesy of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Hussain, who is living in the U.S. unlawfully, was charged with third-degree felony vehicular homicide. Nunez was a naturalized American citizen and father of two living in Maryland at the time of the accident, according to immigration officials.
The agency tasked with managing the country’s legal immigration system played a key role in nabbing the illegal migrant.
USCIS officials identified Hussain’s criminal charges and flagged him as a public safety threat, according to the agency. USCIS then alerted ICE of an upcoming interview he had scheduled with agency officials in Arlington, Virginia, where deportation officers were waiting for him and arrested him without incident on March 13.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, USCISÂ remains committed to safeguarding our communities by helping to ensure dangerous illegal aliens are removed from our country, as well as supporting the president’s call for even tougher measures to prevent future truck tragedies,” Tragesser stated.
In response to a slate of horrific crashes across the country, the Trump administration in recent months has severely tightened rules around illegal migrants working in the trucking industry.
After investigating the circumstances that led to a fatal Florida crash in August, the Department of Transportation (DOT) handed down severe restrictions the following month against non-domiciled commercial driver’s license (CDL) holders and identified state governments that were purportedly issuing licenses to foreign truck drivers unlawfully. In February, the DOT doubled down with more rules to keep illegal migrants away from big rigs, rolling out new screening processes and eliminating a loophole that previously allowed foreigners with bad driving records to obtain trucking licenses.
The chief of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) said even he was taken aback by how bad the crisis became when he took the reins of the trucking industry in October.
“Don’t get us wrong, we’ve always had problems,” FMCSA administrator Derek Barrs previously told the DCNF. “We have seen an increase in the non-domiciled CDLs, and we’ve also seen an increase of what we believe are these chameleon carriers.”
“This is more than what I thought and do not ever remember anything like this before,” Barrs continued.
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