A Maryland man is suing a state police agency after he says several officers violated his rights by detaining him for federal immigration authorities. Months later, he remains in custody.

José Ricardo Villalta Canales, a Rockville resident with Salvadoran nationality, was helping his uncle cut down a tree on his property in August when the arrest occurred, according to the lawsuit. Officers with the Natural Resources Police, a state police force at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, showed up at the scene and ticketed Villalta for cutting down the tree without the necessary license.

According to the suit, the officers swiftly wrote Villalta a ticket for $320. But when they ran Villalta’s license through their database to check for outstanding warrants, officers saw that there was a civil immigration warrant open for him with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They then held Villalta for more than two hours as ICE agents traveled to take him into custody for an alleged civil immigration violation, his lawyers say.

“This abuse of power upended Mr. Villalta’s life, separating him from him family and community; has caused a fear of law enforcement throughout his community; and violated the United States Constitution,” says a press release from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, which is representing Villalta along with the firm Latham and Watkins LLP.

The Washington Post was the first to report on the lawsuit. Villalta has now been held in ICE custody for more than 100 days. He is 31 years old, and he came to the U.S. from El Salvador as an unaccompanied minor more than 13 years ago after the death of a parent, according to the suit.

His lawyers assert that Villalta was subjected to an unreasonable search and seizure, an unlawful arrest, and race-based discrimination at the hands of the NRP officers. The suit also alleges that NRP officers declined to get Villalta a qualified interpreter, even though he does not speak English, relying instead on patchy translation from Villalta’s cousin. They are seeking compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees as restitution.

“It took the police officers five minutes to fine Mr. Villalta for a tree-cutting violation.” Azadeh Erfani, associate counsel for the Washington Lawyers’ Committee said in a release. “They should have let him go at that point, but chose instead to engage in civil immigration enforcement and violate Mr. Villalta’s constitutional and statutory rights. No immigrant can feel safe if a benign interaction with Maryland state police can result in ICE detention and imminent deportation.”

The Natural Resources Police in Maryland, the agency that detained Villalta, manages natural resource preservation and hunting and fishing violations.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources declined to comment specifically on the case, citing pending litigation. A spokesperson referred DCist to an August letter from the NRP to the Maryland Legislative Latino Caucus, which inquired about Villalta’s arrest shortly after it happened.

According to the letter, NRP received a call from a neighbor about “an unlicensed tree trimmer taking down a tree,” and encountered Villalta at the scene. NRP acknowledges that the officers held Villalta for ICE, and stated that it was in line with the agency’s policies for working with other law enforcement agencies on active warrants.

But Villalta’s case resulted in a policy change at the NRP, the letter says, bringing the agency in line with the Maryland State Police in declining to act on administrative warrants.

“In this particular case, the ICE warrant identified by NRP was an administrative warrant. As MSP has already adopted a policy of not executing administrative warrants, NRP is revising its policies and procedures to be consistent with MSP, and to only act on judicial warrants,” the letter reads. “All NRP officers will be educated on the revised policy to ensure full compliance.”

ICE detainers, or requests for law enforcement agencies to hold an immigrant until federal agents arrive, almost never include a warrant approved by a judge. There are an array of legal questions surrounding these detainers, and whether it’s even legal for local law enforcement agencies to hold people past their release date without a judicial warrant. Several jurisdictions across the country have been successfully sued for holding immigrants in custody for ICE.

Villalta’s case comes in the midst of growing tensions in Maryland around local jurisdictions’ cooperation with federal immigration agencies. Montgomery County Executive Mark Elrich has been fighting a very public battle with ICE over his locality’s policies around cooperation with detainers. On Friday, ICE issued a scathing press release condemning Elrich’s policies and those of neighboring Prince George’s County.