Maryland Pastor Back Home with Family After Weeks in Jail Where He Led ‘Many Souls’ to Christ

A Maryland pastor is back home with his family after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and transported to a Louisiana facility where he was held for nearly a month. Despite the hardships he endured in jail, he reports that God used the time to allow him to reach many souls with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Family spokesman Len Foxwell confirms that Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal was recently released on bond and has returned to Easton, MD. “This is the best social media post I’ve ever had the privilege to write: Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal is home,” Foxwell said on Facebook.

“His daughter, Clarissa, flew to Louisiana yesterday, picked him up and brought him back to the great State of Maryland,” he said. “Obviously, there remains work to be done. Let it be said, however, that Pastor Fuentes Espinal and his family are together again for the first time since that terrible morning of July 21.”

“I am very happy to have my dad back home,” Clarissa Fuentes Diaz said in a Facebook video. “He is the pillar of our house. He is the love of our house and I’m just very happy and my heart is full.”

The pastor also spoke during the video saying, “I want to give thanks to the community for the support you have given me during this process. Thank you for your prayers. I am really sure God listened to your prayers.”

Fuentes Espinal originally came to the U.S. 25 years ago from Honduras on a visa, but then overstayed the visa. “It is a federal crime to overstay the authorized period granted under a visitor’s visa,” an ICE spokesperson told WJZ.

Supporters say he’s a law-abiding member of the community with no criminal record. His family says he attempted to work out a legal status to obtain a green card, spending a “considerable amount of money and time,” but he was met with a “bureaucratic nightmare.”

ICE agents detained the 54-year-old pastor who pastors at Jesus te Ama Iglesia del Nazareno church on July 21 on his way to work at a construction site. 

Foxwell says Fuentes Espinal then endured difficult conditions after being first held in a facility in Baltimore. “He didn’t have a bed to sleep on,” Foxwell told CBN News. “He didn’t have a shower. He didn’t have a sink for brushing his teeth. He literally had to use a bucket, and I don’t mean to be graphic for your viewers, but he had to use a bucket for bodily functions.”

After his arrest, Pastor Fuentes Espinal‘s church members stopped meeting out of fear that the same thing would happen to them.

Pastor Gabriel Salguero, founder of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, released the following statement about Fuentes Espinal’s arrest: “The detention of an evangelical pastor who is working hard and helping his neighbors is not the way forward on immigration. Pastor Espinal is an example of how someone who has, for years, tried to navigate the broken system and get legal status and the bureaucracy has failed him.”

Preaching the Gospel in Jail

After being imprisoned, the pastor reportedly ended up preaching to detainees at Winn Correctional Center in Winn Parish, Louisiana, while waiting to face an immigration judge to request bond. “(His daughter) reports that he’s actually preaching to the other detainees at this facility,” Foxwell said at the time. “I guess preachers are going to preach.”

In another video posted on social media, Pastor Fuentes Espinal said God used his time in jail to help him reach others with the gospel.

“The glory of the Lord was manifested in the place where I was detained,” he said in Spanish. “For three weeks, God opened doors for the preaching of His word. And there were many souls converted to Christ. That, my beloved brothers, is the victory we have in our Lord Jesus Christ beyond having gone free from that place, beyond having gone through that process, I think that the joy that should be in us is souls. Souls that received the word and received our Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.”

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As CBN News reported, the pastor’s arrest is the latest in a string of detentions and deportations of Hispanic faith leaders in the U.S. illegally. 

Maurilio Ambrocio pastored the 50 members of Iglesia de Santidad Vida Nueva in Wimauma, Florida. He was deported to Guatemala this summer after two decades on American soil.

And Maria Isidro, a mother and pastor’s wife, was deported to Mexico in June after living in the U.S. for nearly thirty years. Her family contends that she and her family met annually with Homeland Security officials to ensure they had legal recourse to remain in the country.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant DHS secretary, told CBN News in a statement, “Maria Isidro, an illegal alien from Mexico, was issued a final order of removal from an immigration judge on Oct. 21, 2004, after she failed to show up for her court date. She has exhausted all due process and has no legal remedies left to pursue. After failing to self-deport and leave the U.S. for more than two decades, ICE arrested her on June 3, 2025, and deported her on June 11, 2025.”