Pastor and father of 3 arrested in Maryland for overstaying visa a quarter-century ago
Daniel Fuentes Espinal, a 54-year-old father of three, is expected to request bond during his initial hearing at the Louisiana immigration facility to which he was transferred. His family – especially his wife, whom he has been with since they were teenagers – hopes for his release but is struggling with his absence.
'We've been on top of her for her to eat, sleep, but when she's about to eat, she just says, 'I just don't know if your dad ate already,'' his daughter, Clarissa Fuentes Diaz said, crying.
The pastor's arrest is the one of the latest in the Trump administration's barrage of immigration cases, targeting not only undocumented migrants but also people living in the United States legally on student visas and green cards.
Fuentes Espinal picked up a breakfast burrito from McDonald's when he noticed an unmarked vehicle following him, his daughter told CNN. As he made his way back to a construction site with materials he purchased at a nearby Lowe's, Fuentes Espinal was pulled over by a uniformed officer and detained.
ICE confirmed Fuentes Espinal's arrest in a statement to CNN.
'Daniel Omar Fuentes Espinal is an illegal alien from Honduras who was arrested by ICE on July 21, in Easton, Maryland,' the statement said.
'Fuentes entered the United States on a 6-month visa and never left in 24 years. It is a federal crime to overstay the authorized period of time granted under a visitors visa.'
CNN has asked ICE for more details on Fuentes Espinal's arrest and overstayed visa.
Fuentes Espinal was given no explanation for why he was stopped and was only asked for identification before being detained, his daughter said.
'My dad was just confused the whole time, and they cuffed him, put him in the back of the car,' Fuentes Diaz said. 'We don't know everything that people go through, but my dad said he had a different experience than what he's seen on TV. They were nice to him. They put him in the car, and they drove off.'
However, conditions in the immigration detention facility in Hyattsville, Maryland, were worse, Fuentes Diaz told CNN on Friday morning.
'They were treating them worse than dogs,' she said.
Fuentes Espinal immigrated to the US in 2001 with his wife and infant daughter and has since been living in the country on his expired visa, Fuentes Diaz said. Online court records in Maryland indicate that Fuentes Espinal has no criminal history. His daughter also confirmed he has no criminal record.
The pastor was held for one day in an office in Salisbury, Maryland, before he was moved to a holding room at the Baltimore ICE Field Office, where he slept on a bench without a bed, his daughter said.
He was transferred to the Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, on Thursday, his daughter said. Fuentes Espinal has gotten a lawyer, but the change of location forced two scheduled immigration hearings Friday to be cancelled, she said. The attorney representing him was trying to determine Friday morning when Fuentes Espinal would next appear in front of a judge.
Fuentes Espinal works in construction to support his family and has spent the last 15 years as a volunteer pastor at Iglesia del Nazareno Jesus Te Ama, also known as the Church of the Nazarene Jesus Loves You, where he is known for his sermons and generosity.
'Pastor Fuentes Espinal is a beloved pillar of the Easton community known across town for providing shelter to those who need a place to sleep, for opening up his home and providing food and clothing to those who are at the most vulnerable point in their lives, and he never expects anything in return,' Len Foxwell, a close friend, told CNN.
More than $20,000 has been donated to a GoFundMe launched by Foxwell to raise money for Fuentes Espinal's legal expenses and to help cover the basic needs of his family until his return.
Originally from Santa Rita in Yoro, Honduras, Fuentes Espinal immigrated to the US to flee the widespread poverty and violence that gripped his hometown, his daughter told CNN. He sought a safer and more stable future for his family.
'It's not safe, you're scared walking around town, just looking behind your shoulder, violence, gangs, corruption, it's not an ideal place to raise a family, not ideal to work' Fuentes Diaz said.
'There's no jobs that pay enough to … make a living,' she said.
'He's my hero. He has done so much for me, as his daughter, he sacrificed so much for me to have a better future,' she added.
Several Democratic lawmakers have called for Fuentes Espinal's release.
In a letter condemning his arrest, Maryland Reps. Sarah Elfreth and Glenn Ivey called Fuentes Espinal 'a beloved pillar' of Easton and accused the Trump administration of 'indiscriminately profiling and targeting individuals based on their skin color.'
'Through his church ministry, Pastor Espinal has dedicated his life to improving the lives of some of his community's most vulnerable members,' the lawmakers wrote. 'His arrest and detention by ICE does nothing to further your stated goals of making America safer.'
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Trump administration is not targeting immigrants who are considered dangerous criminals.
'They are snatching up anyone they can find as they pursue their mass deportation agenda and terrorizing our communities in the process,' Van Hollen said in a statement. 'My team is engaged with Pastor Espinal's family and I will be monitoring this closely.'
More than a dozen letters have been written by loved ones and community members, including Foxwell, to support and advocate for his release and plan to submit them for consideration at future court proceedings.
'This is not what President Trump campaigned on, and it's not what the American people asked for. He campaigned on securing the southern border, on ridding our nation of some of its most violent criminals and curtailing gang activity. None of those things have any applicability here,' Foxwell said.
'This is a this is a family man, a man of faith, a small businessman who was literally just going to work to put in a full day's work to feed his family.'
CNN's Andy Rose contributed to this report.
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School officials said they could not confirm the student's status or name due to privacy regulations. The teen's arrest elicited an emotional student walkout on the school campus in June. Romero Lira and Senaya Asfaw, the leaders of a student group on campus called Students For Asylum and Immigration Reform organized the walkout. They are both daughters of immigrants. Other high schoolers joined them on campus on June 12 in protest of the student's deportation. The teens described the protest as "extremely successful." Asfaw said there is an increased presence of ICE in their community, which has a large immigrant population. "There's been unrest, confusion and fear since the new administration came in," Asfaw told USA TODAY. "There's been a lot more ICE sightings in general, not on campus, but in the community." Romero Lira said the student's deportation "brought something that felt so far away to our doorstep." 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Jackson, from the White House, said Bogoya-Duarte had "previously ignored a judge's removal order and lost his appeal." "His asylum request was adjudicated prior to removal," she said. Dozens of community members spoke at a recent Detroit Public Schools meeting condemning Bogoya-Duarte's arrest, Chalkbeat Detroit reported. "On the day the rest of his classmates were starting summer and graduating, he was in a detention center," Robinson said. He described the teen as conscientious, focused on school, and said his grades had been improving since he entered the United States. "It was an opportunity cut short for him," he said. Robinson said Bogoya-Duarte was unable to apply for or receive a drivers license because of state restrictions that don't allow undocumented immigrants to obtain them. Angel Garcia, principal of Western International High School where Bogoya-Duarte attended school, called it "a really scary time" for his community. 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'The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable' Younger school children who attended Louisiana schools have also been caught in the crosshairs. ICE deported a 7-year-old girl in New Orleans to Honduras with her mother and her 4-year-old brother who has cancer in late April, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The children are both United States citizens and lived their entires lives in the country, said Sirine Shebaya from the National Immigration Project, which is representing the family. The family was attending a routine immigration appointment when they were arrested and the mother did not have a criminal history, she said. The United States Department of Homeland Security said the kids' mother "entered the country illegally and was released into the interior in 2013." "She was given a final order of deportation in 2015," reads an April 29 post from the agency on X. "In February of 2025, she was arrested by Kenner Police Department in Louisiana for speeding, driving without insurance, and driving without a license," the agency wrote. "When she was taken into ICE custody in April 2025, she chose to bring both children, who are American citizens, with her to Honduras and presented a valid United States passport for each child." Shebaya said she was not given the option to leave her kids behind or make arrangements for them to stay and they were deported within 24 hours. "ICE is supposed to give families time to figure out what options there are for care for their children, but in any cases families are taken into routine check ins, taken into hotel rooms for an extremely brief time and they're told deported tomorrow," Shebaya said. ICE also deported another New Orleans family, including the mother of an 11-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy, who is an American citizen, after they attended a routine immigration appointment in April. They were given 72 hours before they were deported, Shebaya said. The mother and the daughter entered the United States together during the first Trump administration and were undocumented immigrants. The young girl was attending school in the United States for about four years, Shebaya said. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security said on X that the mother "illegally entered the U.S. three times." "Her and her daughter were given final orders of removal in March of 2020," they wrote."When she was taken into ICE custody in April 2025, she chose to bring her daughter, an American citizen, with her to Honduras." Shebaya said the mother was told to bring her children and their passports to her immigration appointment. ICE is "actively instructing people to bring kids in some situations," she said. "If you're a child going to school or family with mixed status within it, there's a shock factor for families and for schoolmates going to school with them and not seeing them showing up," she said. "If anything, it creates terror day in and day out. Kids are being affected by it." DHS officials said in a statement about the New Orleans cases that the agency is "not deporting American children" and "takes its responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to ensure that children are safe and protected." "Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure," they wrote. Immigration attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Project and other advocates have condemned both New Orleans families' deportation and Trump's immigration crackdown, particularly when children are affected. 'Deporting U.S. citizen children is illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral," said Erin Ware, a senior associate at the law firm Ware Immigration, in a news release from the American Civil Liberties Union, about the New Orleans case. "The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable, and every official responsible for it should be held accountable.' 'I was hoping to graduate with my friends' Nory Sontay Ramos, a 17-year-old honors student at Miguel Contreras High School in Westlake, Los Angeles was preparing for her senior year before she and her mother were arrested by ICE at an immigration appointment. 'ICE took us to a room, and they ended up telling my mom, 'Your case is over, so we have to take you guys with us,'' Sontay Ramos told the news outlet The 19th. The teen and her mother were undocumented. The duo entered the United States as asylum seekers when Sontay Ramos was 6 years old, NBC 4 Los Angeles reported. McLaughlin said Sontay Ramos and her mother "exhausted all of their legal options to remain in the U.S." "On March 12, 2019, an immigration judge ordered their removal," she said. "On August 12, 2022, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal." Authorities took the teen and her mother to Texas and deported them to Guatemala on July 4. 'I feel really sad because I was hoping to graduate with my friends and be there with them doing track and field,' she told NBC 4. At Miguel Contreras Learning Complex where she attended school, physical education teacher Manuel Guevara told The 19th that she was "happy-go-lucky." 'Nory is going into her senior year, which is another thing that's just killing me," he told the news outlet. "She was going into her senior year with all this momentum.' 'Nobody should be in there' A student who was detained and later released on bond is left with emotional scars after his experience in a Massachusetts detention facility. ICE pulled over and arrested Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 18, on his drive to volleyball practice at Milford High School in Massachusetts on May 31. The next day, Gomes da Silva's girlfriend and the other seniors at Milford High School graduated under a cloud of angst. Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader, was absent, as were two of the graduating students and the families of many others who feared arrest and deportation if they showed up. "I heard many stories of people who didn't cheer for their children," for fear of being exposed to immigration authorities, Coleen Greco, mother of a volleyball teammate of Gomes da Silva's, told USA TODAY. Federal officials said they were targeting Gomes da Silva's father, who owns the car he was driving, because he is undocumented and has a history of speeding. Gomes da Silva's attorney Robin Nice said his father has no arrests or convictions for speeding. The family moved to the United States from Brazil when Gomes da Silva was 7 years old and overstayed their visa, according to Nice. At the school's graduation ceremony, Milford High School Principal Joshua Otlin referred to the community's lingering "fear and anxiety" after Gomes da Silva's arrest. 'There is wrenching despair and righteous anger, where there should be gratitude and joy," he said. Gomes da Silva was later released from the ICE detention facility after six days in custody. He has applied for asylum in the hopes of avoiding deportation. A new surge of fear for immigrant families with school children Officials at schools with large immigrant populations say many students have been fearful since Trump ramped up immigration enforcement. "There's been very high levels of anxiety in the community about immigration enforcement for many months," said Otlin. Many immigrant families in Los Angeles County, where Sontay Ramos and Garcia Lara lived, avoided graduation ceremonies after Trump sent National Guard Troops to the Southern California city when Angelenos protested ICE arrests there in June. How LA school graduations Became the epicenter of fear for ICE family separations Los Angeles Unified School District has produced 'know your rights' cards with directions on how to respond if approached by immigration agents to students who request them, said Christy Hagen, a spokesperson for the district. Officials there are urging parents and guardians to update their students' emergency contact information and designate a trusted adult as an authorized caregiver in the event they are detained, she said. School officials elsewhere said they are also making plans to aid immigrant students ahead of the new school year. Garcia, the high school principal from Detroit, said the school may increase English language instruction for students who speak it as a second language. He wants to give students "more agency in knowing their rights." "We have to be more up front and honest with students about the dangers that we're currently experiencing in our country, especially for those who are not citizens." he said. While Garcia Lara won't return to nearby Torrance Unified in the fall, Myers, the spokesperson for his old school district, said the school community's concern about the young boy and his father's well-being has "reaffirmed our district's belief in the human spirit." Contributing: Ben Adler, USA TODAY; Max Reinhart, The Detroit News Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@ Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
