The Spy sits down with Len Foxwell to discuss the release of Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal in Easton on Friday and what comes next for both the pastor and the community.

This video is approximately 10 minutes in length.

Dozens of protesters braved the heat, rain, and traffic on Friday evening to decry the detention of beloved Easton pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal by ICE.

Nearly 100 people of all ages braved stifling heat, speeding cars, and finally a soaking rain shower at the corner of Dover Street and Route 50 on behalf of Daniel Fuentes Espinal, the Easton pastor arrested by ICE earlier this week.

They held homemade placards —  some political, others scriptural, a few downright profane — and chanted slogans as passing cars beeped their approval as a news chopper hovered above.

The winner for best dressed was a woman in full Lady Liberty regalia. Best sign: ICE: Insufferable Cowardly Extremists.

The protesters were happy to talk to The Spy, but few wanted to give their names for self-evident reasons.

One woman decried the bureaucratic process of naturalization as odious and prohibitively expensive for most immigrants, who nonetheless play a critical role in providing services to Talbot like construction, painting, landscaping, and agricultural work.

“This is straight out of the fascist playbook,” said another gentleman, among several men and women in clerical garb. “Arrest the leaders to intimidate and disenfranchise their followers.”

A third woman said “Trump pledged to deport the worst of the worst. This is the polar opposite of that promise. This is not good governance.”

Meanwhile, the 54-year-old Fuentes Espinal was transferred to a detention center in Louisiana northwest of New Orleans, a family member stated publicly, adding that he was initially deprived of his daily medicine, but is receiving it there.

Following the arrest, ICE issued a statement saying, “Fuentes entered the United States on a six-month visa and never left in 24 years. It is a federal crime to overstay the authorized period of time granted under a visitor’s visa.”

Posting on Instagram, the Maryland Legislative Latino Caucus “condemns the unjust detention of Pastor Espinal and reaffirms its commitment to defending immigrant communities. We call for his immediate release and demand immigration enforcement focus on real threats not devoted community leaders. Maryland must stand for safety, dignity, and humanity.”

Maryland Representatives Sarah Elfreth and Glenn Ivey, along with Senator Chris Van Hollen, condemned the arrest, calling Pastor Fuentes Espinal a “beloved pillar” of Easton and accusing the Trump administration of “indiscriminately profiling and targeting individuals based on their skin color.”

 Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal

An Easton minister who was born in Honduras and has lived in the United States for nearly 25 years was detained Monday morning by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal, who has served as the minister of Iglesia del Nazareno Jesús Te Ama church since 2015, was arrested early on July 21 after departing Lowe’s after picking up some construction materials, his daughter told local media. An ICE vehicle followed him to the nearby McDonald’s, and later arrested him on Route 322 after he ate his breakfast.

According to published reports, he was first taken to Salisbury and then transferred to the Baltimore ICE detention center, where he awaits further transfer. The daughter, Clarissa Fuentes Diaz, said Espinal is a father of three with a large extended family, and has no criminal record.  Espinal’s family has tried to obtain citizenship legally for years, but due to backlogs and expenses, Espinal remained undocumented, Diaz told local media.

Matthew R. Peters, executive director of the Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center, which provides outreach services to immigrants, said such detentions are not new but appear to be ramping up. The detention of a prominent member of his community has raised the profile of the issue and may point to further detentions in the future.

“This is nothing new for this community,” Peters said. “In this case, people on the outside are feeling injustice. But everyone who is taken causes an impact on their family and friends.”

Since the start of the second Trump administration in January, immigration arrests have doubled in Maryland, according to the Deportation Data Project, an academic research-based initiative to track deportations. More than 600 immigrants with no criminal record have been arrested during that timespan.

Community members have come out in vigorous support for Espinal, with over 10 character letters written on his behalf, including Len Foxwell, a retired state official and communications strategist. Espinal spoke at the July funeral of Foxwell’s son Darren, who died in an auto accident earlier this summer and was a friend of Espinal’s son Daniel.

“If there is anyone who exemplifies the teachings of Christ and the true values of the Christian faith, it is Pastor Espinal,” Foxwell wrote on his Facebook page. “This [arrest] isn’t about securing the southern border, nor is it about making our communities safe. This is a human tragedy that has torn apart a hard-working family led by one who has given so much to others.

Peters said anyone who may be vulnerable to ICE detention should have a plan in place and work to understand the process through trusted resources with accurate information, noting the danger of scammers preying on immigrants worried about potential arrest.

In a major policy announcement aimed at addressing longstanding racial inequities in Maryland, Governor Wes Moore unveiled a series of actions Tuesday at Bethel AME Church in Cambridge. The centerpiece was the formal launch of the state’s Just Communities designation, a framework intended to steer up to $400 million in competitive state investment to communities that have been historically impacted by discriminatory policies.

Speaking before an audience of more than 200 attendees, Governor Moore emphasized the economic and social costs of racial inequality. “We know the racial wealth gap affects all of us. It hurts our economy, restrains job growth, and limits our potential as a state,” he said. “We cannot afford to delay progress—we need action.”

The Just Communities program, signed into law in 2024, uses racial equity and community-based metrics to identify and support areas disproportionately harmed by redlining, urban renewal, environmental injustice, and high incarceration rates. Following a yearlong review by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, 419 of Maryland’s 1,463 census tracts—across 17 counties and Baltimore City—have been formally designated for priority access to funding. These five-year designations take effect July 1, 2025.

“This is a first-of-its-kind designation,” said Housing Secretary Jake Day. “It is a critical step in lifting the barriers that create separate and unequal neighborhoods across our state.”

In tandem with the designation, Governor Moore also announced an expansion of his administration’s clemency actions. An additional 6,938 pardons for low-level cannabis possession convictions have been granted, extending the historic 2024 executive order that cleared more than 175,000 such convictions—the largest in the nation. The pardons will be reflected in criminal background checks, and all records will be removed from public view by January 31, 2026, per the Expungement Reform Act.

The announcement aligns with several other equity-focused initiatives from the Moore-Miller administration, including:

• The launch of a Community Investment Venture Fund for entrepreneurs of color;

• Funding through the UPLIFT initiative to address racial disparities in property appraisals;

• A $4 million expansion of the Roads to Careers program supporting high-skill workforce training;

• Previous investments of over $1.3 billion in Maryland’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities;

• Over $816 million in state procurement awards directed to Black-owned businesses;

• Expanded mortgage access for 1,500 first-time Black homebuyers; and

• The ENOUGH initiative is a state-level plan to end concentrated poverty.

The event took place within blocks of Long Wharf, a former site of the domestic slave trade, and in a church central to the Eastern Shore’s Black heritage. Officials and community leaders reflected on the symbolism of the Juneteenth announcement.

“This designation represents more than funding. It signals that Maryland is serious about repairing the damage of past injustices,” said Jaelon Moaney, Vice Chair of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture. “This is how inclusive governance looks in practice.”

Cambridge Mayor Lajan Cephas and Dorchester County leaders echoed that sentiment, pointing to the ENOUGH initiative and its potential to foster generational change.

Governor Moore concluded the event by reaffirming his administration’s commitment to results-driven policy: “We are going to continue the work of repair with action that delivers results—not just rhetoric.”

The Spy is sure that more than a few Spy readers blinked their eyes the other day when they read the headline that the Mid-Shore Community Foundation (MSCF) had committed almost $4 million to support the building of the new UM Shore Regional Health hospital project. It was inevitable that the region’s largest community foundation would make a meaningful donation to this much-needed facility, but the Spy wanted to know how the MSCF could make such a significant commitment when historically their largest “stretch” grants were in the very low six figures.

Of course, we turned to Buck Duncan, president of MSCF, to answer that question, and it proved to be a lot more complicated than simply writing a check. The more one understands how Buck and his board assembled this commitment, the more one can appreciate the power and value of a community foundation, as well as the hundreds of its donors, who made such a meaningful gift possible.

And only Buck can make all of this such a good story to tell.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length. For more information about the Mid-Shore Community Foundation, please go here.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security over the weekend took down a public list of cities and jurisdictions that the Trump administration labeled as “sanctuary” cities, after a sharp rebuke from a group representing 3,000 sheriffs and local law enforcement.

On Saturday, National Sheriffs’ Association President Sheriff Kieran Donahue slammed the list as an “unnecessary erosion of unity and collaboration with law enforcement.”

“The completion and publication of this list has not only violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement, but it also has the potential to strain the relationship between Sheriffs and the White House administration,” Donahue said.

DHS published the list Thursday and it was unavailable by Sunday. It’s unclear when it was removed, but Internet archives indicate that Saturday was the last time the list was still active.

In a statement, DHS did not answer questions as to why the list was removed.

“As we have previously stated, the list is being constantly reviewed and can be changed at any time and will be updated regularly,” according to a DHS spokesperson. “Designation of a sanctuary jurisdiction is based on the evaluation of numerous factors, including self-identification as a Sanctuary Jurisdiction, noncompliance with Federal law enforcement in enforcing immigration laws, restrictions on information sharing, and legal protections for illegal aliens.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Fox News Sunday did not acknowledge that the list was taken down, but said some localities had “pushed back.”

“They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify, but they do qualify,” Noem said. “They are giving sanctuary to criminals.”

Local law enforcement aids in immigration enforcement by holding immigrants in local jails until federal immigration officials can arrive.

The creation of the list stems from Donald Trump’s executive order in April that required DHS to produce a list of cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration officials in enforcement matters, in order to strip federal funding from those local governments.

Those jurisdictions are often dubbed “sanctuary cities,” but immigration enforcement still occurs in the city — there’s just no coordination between the local government and the federal government.

The jurisdictions are often a target for the Trump administration and Republicans, who support the President Donald Trump campaign promise of mass deportations of people without permanent legal status.

Congressional Republicans in March grilled mayors from Boston, Chicago and Denver, on their cities’ immigration policies during a six-hour hearing before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Local officials were puzzled by the list.

One law enforcement association in North Dakota questioned why several counties — Billings, Golden Valley, Grant, Morton, Ramsey, Sioux, and Slope — were listed as sanctuary jurisdictions because those areas cooperate with federal immigration officials.

In a statement, the North Dakota Sheriff’s and Deputies Association said the “methodology and criteria used to compile this list is unknown,” and there has been no communication from DHS “on how to rectify this finding.”

“The elected Sheriffs of these counties take strong objection with language in this release characterizing them as ‘deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws endangering American communities,’” according to NDSDA.

“The North Dakota Sheriff’s and Deputies Association is working to gather more information regarding the lack of transparency and reasoning as to why the Department of Homeland Security did not fact check prior to incorrectly naming these North Dakota counties.”

Local advocacy groups also noted the problems with the DHS list.

“I assume they’ve removed (the list) because they were bombarded with complaints about inaccuracy and how and why these various jurisdictions got on the list,” Steven Brown, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, said in an interview Monday.

According to the Internet Archive website Wayback Machine, the states, as well as the District of Columbia, that were on the list included Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington state and Wisconsin.

By Ariana Figueroa Christopher Shea and Amy Dalrymple contributed to this story. 

Talbot County has unexpectedly been named one of several Maryland jurisdictions designated as a “sanctuary” by the Trump administration—a move that could put federal funding at risk and place the county in the middle of a national immigration debate.

The announcement came Thursday as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to pressure local governments into supporting federal immigration enforcement. The list includes Baltimore County, Montgomery County, Queen Anne’s County, and the cities of Annapolis, Rockville, and Takoma Park, among others.

The designation follows an executive order directing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to identify localities that, in the administration’s view, do not fully cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The purpose is to cut off federal funds to jurisdictions that limit their involvement in immigration enforcement.

Talbot County’s inclusion raises questions. The county has not adopted any formal policy that restricts cooperation with ICE, and immigration issues have rarely been a topic of discussion in local government or public debate. Still, the Trump administration appears to be interpreting “non-cooperation” broadly.

The designation carries potential consequences. Talbot, like many rural counties, relies on federal grants for programs ranging from public safety and infrastructure to housing and health services. Even the threat of losing those funds could complicate budget planning and long-term community investments.