New York
5,000 Miles, 8 Countries: The Path to the U.S. Through One Family’s Eyes
The three children had not bathed in four days.
They had been sleeping in a makeshift tent on a dirty street outside a bus terminal in Mexico City, and Hayli, only 6, was developing a rash between her legs. But the parents could not spare the 20 pesos, or roughly $1, for a bucket shower.
After a 55-day trek through Latin America, the five members of the Aguilar Ortega family were stranded more than 3,000 miles from their Venezuelan homeland, and almost as many miles from their intended destination: New York City.
It had been a week since they had arrived in Mexico City, and they had no money to proceed north. The children — Hayli, Samuel, 10, and Josué, 11 — were in good spirits, imagining aloud what it would be like to live in New York. But for the parents, Henry Aguilar, 34, and his partner, Leivy Ortega, 29, the lull demanded a reassessment of what still lay ahead.
While Mayor Eric Adams of New York spoke at a nearby conference in Mexico City, the Aguilar Ortega family slept in tents.
Millions of Venezuelans like the Aguilar Ortega family have fled economic misery and political repression in their homeland as it descended into turmoil. The exodus has led to a sharp increase in crossings at the U.S. border, reigniting immigration as one of the most polarizing issues ahead of the presidential election.
Indeed, the Biden administration recently took executive action to limit the number of migrants crossing the southern border. The decision angered critics who contend that it contradicts America’s image as a safe harbor for the vulnerable. But others welcomed the move amid concerns that migrants were being let in with few checks.
Mr. Aguilar embodied that paradox. He set off for the United States with a turbulent past as a soldier, police officer and bodyguard in Venezuela, and after a prison stint that could derail his chances of securing asylum.
But Mr. Aguilar was hoping to start anew.
Ms. Ortega dreamed of maybe one day opening a restaurant. Both were chasing a vague promise of a better future in the United States while casting aside the real possibility that his criminal history could render the family’s hardship for naught.
The New York Times documented the family’s one-year odyssey, first meeting them in Mexico City, and then rejoining them at the U.S.-Mexican border. The ordeal would test their mental and physical fortitude, strain the parents’ relationship, and challenge their commitment and ability to build a new life in the United States.
The family’s dog, Donna, was with the family every step of the journey.
The journey took them through a jungle of dead bodies and was filled with dangers that terrified the parents, including an obstacle course of dirty police officers, smugglers and immigration checkpoints they traversed on foot and by bus. They had to panhandle, sell lollipops and hustle up odd jobs along the way.
But for the children, the journey was framed as a daring family experience. They took pictures and recorded video that they shared with The Times. They even brought their coffee-colored Labrador mix, Donna. In their eyes, it was all part of a big adventure that would end in a place they had seen only in movies.
“The kids want to go to New York,” Mr. Aguilar said in Spanish as he stood by his tent in Mexico City. “They want to see Times Square.”
But his American dream was even simpler: “All I want is to take my kids to play ball in a park,” he said.
MAY – AUGUST 2023 COLOMBIA
Samuel, Hayli and Josué pose for a photo in Colombia, where along the way they slept in a town plaza for two weeks.
The Decision to Go to New York
Mr. Aguilar left Venezuela about six years ago, part of a flight of more than seven million people who have escaped a once-wealthy country where the economy collapsed and crime skyrocketed under President Nicolás Maduro.
Three years later, Mr. Aguilar found himself in Chile, where he sparked a romance with Ms. Ortega, who is also Venezuelan, and they blended their families. Ms. Ortega left behind a 13-year-old daughter in Ecuador because she was too sick to travel.
Besides Ecuador, the family also spent time in Peru before setting their sights on the United States at the children’s prodding. So they headed to Colombia but with no money, no plan and no place to sleep — a frequent plight during their voyage.
They slept in a town plaza there for two weeks before Mr. Aguilar and Ms. Ortega gathered enough money to rent a home. Colombia, Mr. Aguilar thought, was where he would prepare the children for the menacing rainforest between Colombia and Panama known as the Darién Gap.
“It’s going to be a grand adventure,” Mr. Aguilar recalled telling them. “But with real-life obstacles.”
So Mr. Aguilar put them through an at-home boot camp with a summer camp feel, letting them ride bicycles to boost their stamina.
He woke them up before 7 a.m., but their breakfast portions were small to brace for the coming hunger.
Crossing the Darién Gap
At first, the journey into “la selva,” or the jungle, had the trappings of an organized tour.
The family was given pink wristbands after paying $300 to the armed men who control access to the Darién Gap. And surrounded by hundreds of Venezuelans, they even had a sense of anticipation as they smiled for selfies, their clothes still clean.
That excitement would fade as they waded into the jungle’s depths.
Their feet were rubbed raw as they trudged through mud. Hayli lost two toenails and cried as dirt seeped into the exposed skin. Torrents of rain made rivers roar, forcing Mr. Aguilar to ferry each family member across, one by one — with Donna the Labrador’s stubbornness nearly drowning him.
“Muerto! Muerto!” those toward the front would call back as they passed the bodies of migrants. “Dead! Dead!”
Ms. Ortega generously, but perhaps naïvely, shared the family’s food with other migrants, leaving the family to subsist on nothing but river water on the last two days of the six-day hike through the jungle.
It was hard to hide the brutality of the journey from the children.
“No puedo,” Ms. Ortega would say. “I can’t.”
AUGUST – OCTOBER PANAMA TO MEXICO CITY
The parents presented the journey as a grand adventure to the children.
The family used currency to keep track of places they went through in Guatemala and Mexico.
Getting to Mexico City
Once out of the jungle, the children were committed to the adventure as they crisscrossed dirt roads and slipped from one country into the next.
Josué, ever talkative, told anyone within earshot that they were headed to New York to see Times Square, or las pantallas: the screens.
Samuel, the most reserved of the three, assumed the role of navigator. He quietly tracked their trek on a wrinkled map of Central America as Donna meandered without a leash.
Hayli was always the first to smile for pictures, flashing her tooth gap. Her small legs carried her for hours, as the family circumvented border checkpoints in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.
But for the parents, the burden of not having money was inescapable.
There was transportation to arrange and immigration officers to grease. Bus companies would charge them double or refuse to sell them tickets because they were migrants, a taste of the prejudice that awaited them further north.
They often slept in tents on the street, and going to sleep without eating became normal.
In Guatemala, police officers patted down migrants to steal their money. They groped Ms. Ortega’s breast, leaving her feeling violated, she said. Mr. Aguilar created hiding places for their cash, using toenail clippers to cut small openings into Hayli’s jacket and Josué’s pants. The ruse worked.
They mostly came to rely on the charity of strangers and sporadic money transfers from friends and relatives: more than $8,000 in total, the parents acknowledged with a trace of shame.
OCTOBER – NOVEMBER MEXICO CITY TO CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico
Hopping Freight Trains
The family rode a succession of freight trains to the U.S. border.
The wait for a train could last for hours, especially in the dead of night. When one stopped, they would all emerge from hiding near the tracks and clamber onto a car’s metal roof.
They fastened themselves as best they could, wrapped loosely in rope and blankets, the wind blowing against their faces as they left behind Mexico City.
They were riding “la bestia,” or the beast, the frightening nickname for the cargo trains that many migrants hop illegally, hoping to evade checkpoints and cartels. Countless people have died or lost limbs riding the trains.
Ms. Ortega wrapped her legs around Hayli and prayed that the boys would not fall off. Bundled in quilts, the boys squinted their eyes against the cold breeze, taking in the arid shrub land.
The nights were the hardest. They battled falling asleep, fearful with each jerk of the train that they would fall off.
NOV. 9-10 CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO
A family selfie along the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, before they crossed into Texas.
Ms. Ortega looks at a family ring, the only heirloom she brought from Venezuela.
On their last night in Juárez, the family left for the border patrol checkpoint at 3 a.m.
Approaching the Border
The Times reconnected with the family in Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city where migrants are regularly smuggled and kidnapped for ransom, and sometimes murdered. The Aguilar Ortegas were visibly disheveled, emerging from the last train with little but the clothes on their back, closer than ever to the United States.
“Time is going by slowly now,” Mr. Aguilar said after taking the children to glance at the Rio Grande. Texas was just a few yards away, behind a towering fence.
Using a mobile app that the Biden administration has relied on to curb illegal crossings, the family had secured a coveted appointment to enter the United States legally the next day — the first step for many migrants seeking asylum.
But with no money left for food that night, they decided to pawn Ms. Ortega’s white gold ring, her last family heirloom.
A pawnshop offered her 400 pesos, or $23 — a lowball price, she thought, perhaps because she was Venezuelan. She found a Mexican man to sell the ring for her.
The shop offered him more than double, about $70. She took the money, feeling sad but clever, and slightly empowered.
Entering the United States
As dawn crept across the Rio Grande, migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela with immigration appointments braced the frigid desert air on a bridge connecting Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, Texas.
After entering so many countries illegally, the family’s final border crossing was to be entirely lawful. But that did little to ease their nerves as federal officers began to check their passports, take fingerprints and photographs, and swab their cheeks for DNA.
It is not clear what immigration officials knew of Mr. Aguilar.
He had a tumultuous upbringing in Venezuela: He said he was kicked out of the house as a teenager, and was in a motorcycle accident that resulted in permanent memory loss that blurs his childhood.
Still, he recalled dreaming of becoming a detective, and after a stop in the military, he joined Venezuela’s largest national police agency, which is heavily politicized and has a history of corruption.
Mr. Aguilar was part of a SWAT-like unit that specialized in taking down organized crime when, as a 21-year-old police officer, he was arrested and charged in 2010 with abusing his authority.
Venezuelan prosecutors accused him of participating in an armed shakedown of someone who owed his friend money. The friend and Mr. Aguilar, said to be carrying another officer’s gun, were accused of holding several people at gunpoint and stealing money and bottles of whiskey. Mr. Aguilar was charged with aggravated robbery, extortion and embezzlement, according to the few court documents available online.
Mr. Aguilar says Venezuelan prosecutors distorted the charges and that he and his friend weren’t violent. In court documents, he portrayed himself as accompanying his friend for backup. He eventually served two years in prison, he said.
At the U.S. border, background checks did not appear to turn up Mr. Aguilar’s criminal past. The family was released on parole — a status that allows migrants without visas to live and work in the country as their asylum cases wind through the courts.
Mr. Aguilar’s first court appearance before an immigration judge is scheduled for April 2025. He doesn’t know how he intends to deal with his past: The government can bar asylum for people convicted of serious crimes, and Mr. Aguilar would have to disclose his record on his asylum application.
None of that was front of mind as the family walked into downtown El Paso, ushered in by an archway with a familiar greeting: Bienvenidos.
NOV. 10-24 EL PASO, TEXAS
The family shared tight quarters in a shelter with other migrants arriving daily to El Paso.
Mr. Aguilar slept outside the shelter in El Paso with Donna, because dogs weren’t allowed.
Tumult in Texas
By Day 3 in El Paso, the family was already in turmoil. Ms. Ortega had gotten in a fight at a shelter with three Venezuelan women after tempers flared in the dinner line. The family was forced to go to another shelter.
Ms. Ortega sat down on a stoop, her face scratched, and began to cry.
They were told they did not qualify for free migrant buses out of Texas. And while they had collected $120 — mostly thanks to Donna, who attracted generous passers-by — commercial bus transport to New York was up to $450 per person. They had survived a treacherous monthslong journey, only to be stranded again.
Ms. Ortega thought of the upcoming birthday of her daughter in Ecuador, and wondered if she would have money for a gift. She spoke wistfully about a friend who had made it to New York and already had an apartment and enough money to help his family in Venezuela.
“It’s not envy, but I want to be over there already,” she said through tears. “I feel stuck here. It hasn’t even been 72 hours and I’ve already been hit.”
Mr. Aguilar consoled her. “It’s always been like this,” he said. “But we always figure it out.”
The journey had taken its toll on the children. When Josué and Samuel played with toy cars on the sidewalk, they re-enacted scenes from their young lives: immigration police officers chasing migrants.
And tensions between the parents began to simmer as they deciphered what to do next. Was New York even the right place to go?
“Things are tough in New York with the 100,000 migrants who have arrived there,” Father Rafael García warned them gently at their first shelter, which is run by the Roman Catholic Church.
Taped to the shelter wall, a flier in Spanish paid for by New York City offered a more dire assessment: “It’s best if you go to a more affordable city.”
The flight the family took to New York was the first time Ms. Ortega had been on a plane.
After arriving, the family headed for a familiar migrant starting point, the Roosevelt Hotel.
Fasten Your Seatbelts
Hayli cried when her ears popped for the first time as the plane gained altitude, but once it glided into La Guardia Airport, her sense of wonder took over.
“Papi, the bathroom was magical!” she exclaimed, recounting how the hand dryers and toilets sprung to life via sensors.
Just a few weeks earlier, New York had seemed out of reach. But in El Paso, the family met a group of Christian missionaries from Michigan who, taken aback by their story, raised nearly $2,000 for Delta flights.
And so it was that the family landed in New York the day after Thanksgiving with 20 cents, their few belongings stuffed inside a donated suitcase and a pink sleeping bag that Mr. Aguilar hauled like Santa Claus.
The family had heard that if they went to a place called Manhattan, they could get free shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel, the welcoming center for the 200,000 migrants who have recently come to the city.
At a Queens subway station, they persuaded a Spanish-speaking police officer to let them in without paying the fare. They climbed a maze of stairs and almost boarded the wrong train until a passer-by offered them guidance.
The children stared out the 7 train in awe as the city skyline materialized against an orange sunset.
“Better than riding the top of a train,” Mr. Aguilar said.
NOV. 25 – DEC. 9 MANHATTAN AND BROOKLYN
For the children, Times Square was the goal. They stared in awe at the lit-up screens and the costumed superheroes.
The family celebrated Ms. Ortega’s 29th birthday at the Floyd Bennett Field shelter in Brooklyn.
Trying to Make It in New York
The children held hands in Times Square. They strolled around Central Park, posing for a picture by the statue of Simón Bolivar, the revered Venezuelan who fought Spain.
But the allure of sightseeing quickly gave way to challenges: finding jobs, permanent housing, a sense of stability.
They had been assigned to a far-flung Brooklyn shelter at Floyd Bennett Field, an old airfield on Jamaica Bay where the city is housing hundreds of families in a giant tent dormitory.
Upset by the tent environment and its distance from Manhattan, Mr. Aguilar, prone to making rash decisions, initially rejected the shelter’s free room and board before acknowledging it was the family’s only option.
“I was being rebellious,” Mr. Aguilar said. “I’ve been wrong so many times before. I’m not perfect.”
But the parents began getting antsy. The shelter was getting crowded. They didn’t speak English or know how to apply for a legal work permit.
So after just three weeks, Mr. Aguilar uprooted his family again.
DECEMBER – MARCH MIDDLETOWN, CONN.
The family was placed into a two-bedroom home in Middletown, Conn., after leaving the shelter system in New York.
Hayli and the boys were enrolled in schools, where they quickly picked up English.
A New Home in Connecticut
A few days before Christmas, the family was sleeping in a car outside a gas station in Brooklyn.
The children snuggled tightly in the back seat, braving the cold in a beat-up Honda sedan Mr. Aguilar had found on Facebook for $800. Then good fortune intervened.
During a brief stay in Connecticut a few weeks earlier, the family had met Maria Cardona, who works at a social services provider there. She called Ms. Ortega to check in, and learned of the family’s setup. She immediately made some calls.
“Their situation impacted me deeply,” Ms. Cardona said.
She helped them move into a two-bedroom house on a leafy street in Middletown, Conn., operated by a local nonprofit that provides free emergency housing for homeless families. The family was allowed to stay on a month-by-month basis if they showed a case manager they were actively looking for employment and a permanent home.
More help arrived.
Amy Swan, the psychologist at the children’s elementary school, gathered donations of food and clothes, as well as money to pay the $410 fee for Mr. Aguilar to apply for a permit to work legally.
Her husband, Ray Swan, owns a wood workshop and was looking for a worker. So he hired Mr. Aguilar, who worked in carpentry after leaving Venezuela, and began paying him $20 an hour to build furniture and kitchen cabinets.
“He works hard and doesn’t complain,” Mr. Swan said at his workshop in March. “I can’t stop singing his praises.”
MARCH – JULY MIDDLETOWN, CONN. TO HOUSTON
After abruptly leaving Connecticut for Houston, the family faced new challenges.
The parents share news of her pregnancy with their three children.
More Turmoil and an Uncertain Future
In early March, the family received more welcome news: Ms. Ortega was pregnant.
She’s expected to give birth later this year. Having a child who is a U.S. citizen would not give the parents any special protections against deportation, leaving the family’s immigration status in flux.
Immigration lawyers said that Mr. Aguilar’s past will seriously complicate his bid for asylum, an uphill process that usually ends with judges saying no.
“If it’s God’s will that I’m not here in two years, then so be it,” Mr. Aguilar said in Connecticut in March. “I’m happy being with my family and making them happy.”
But the parents were still stressing about their future, and their relationship continued to fray. One night in mid-April, Ms. Ortega grabbed a baseball bat and swung at Mr. Aguilar, hitting his hands. She said it happened in the heat of the moment. Mr. Aguilar was not injured and did not hit back.
She was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, and a protective order was issued to keep Ms. Ortega away from Mr. Aguilar. He lost his carpentry job, and the family was forced from the house. Mr. Aguilar was placed in a shelter for domestic violence victims with his children, Samuel and Hayli; Ms. Ortega was set up elsewhere with Josué, her son.
The family was languishing again — apart, with a baby on the way and their immigration status still in question.
Desperate, they fell back on the same spur-of-the-moment manner that guided their travels. Ignoring the protective order and strapped for money, the parents reconciled and abandoned Connecticut, leaving Ms. Ortega’s court case unresolved. They hauled the children and Donna south in the old Honda, hoping it wouldn’t break down.
About 1,700 miles and five days later, they arrived in Houston, where the mother of Mr. Aguilar’s two children took the family in, cramming into a small apartment with mattresses on the floor.
Mr. Aguilar is applying for landscaping jobs while doing delivery gigs. Ms. Ortega has been satisfying her pregnancy cravings with mangos.
But, ever restless, the parents were already hatching next moves.
Denver seemed promising. Salt Lake City, perhaps.
In Houston, at least, Mr. Aguilar had fulfilled his wish: He found a park to play catch with the children.
new video loaded: Protesters Clash with Federal Agents Outside ICE Detention Center in New Jersey
transcript
transcript
Protesters Clash with Federal Agents Outside ICE Detention Center in New Jersey
Protesters and immigration agents clashed outside Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, where activists have gathered for days to denounce conditions inside.
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“Get back!” “Get back, get back, get back, get back, get back!” [chanting] “ICE, ICE has got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho.” “We’ve heard repeatedly about these horror stories of pregnant women not getting access to care, of people with injuries not being treated. People shouldn’t have to starve themselves to make their dignity known.” “Down, down with the degradation.” “Down, down with the degradation.”
By Christina Kelso
May 28, 2026
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Ellen Hagan grew up in a small town in Kentucky, and moved to New York City as quickly as she could after she graduated from college. She arrived a few weeks before Sept. 11, and tried to get her bearings in a city turned upside down.
She found a group of fellow young artists and writers who wanted to take advantage of everything they could in the city, on very limited budgets. They went to poetry readings and dance parties, and rented tiny apartments in the East Village.
All the while, Ms. Hagan was diligent about saving money, even when she had very little of it.
“I didn’t know what I was saving for, but I knew I wasn’t going to have a job that would give me a pension,” she said. “I wanted to make enough money to live the New York existence I was dreaming of.”
Twenty-five years later, Ms. Hagan and her husband, David Flores, whom she started dating in her early years in New York, have much more money than they used to. Still, they feel more anxious about money than they hoped they would at this point in their lives.
The couple both work at DreamYard, a Bronx arts nonprofit. Last year, they made $178,135 there collectively, with Ms. Hagan, 47, directing the poetry and theater programs, and Mr. Flores, also 47, serving as the head of visual art and design.
They typically bring in another $40,000 to $60,000 a year through their freelance work. Mr. Flores is an adjunct professor, a photographer and a filmmaker, and Ms. Hagan teaches at a graduate writing program and writes books and poetry. They try to set aside about 15 percent of their income each year to grow their savings.
The couple live in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan with their two daughters, who are 12 and 15.
Homeownership Doesn’t Solve Everything
As a young couple, Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores lived in a 400-square-foot East Village rental. When their rent started to tick up, Ms. Hagan began looking for a place to buy, seeing homeownership as a buoy that would all but guarantee a secure financial life in New York.
Sixteen years ago, the couple found a perfect apartment in Washington Heights and scrambled to cobble together a down payment. They pooled their savings to put a 15 percent down payment on the $335,000 home. Once they closed, they were left with only a few hundred dollars in savings, but were thrilled and relieved.
“I had this sense that when you buy, you’re set in New York City,” Ms. Hagan said.
The reality, she has found, is more complicated.
The couple’s mortgage payment is $1,300 a month, and their maintenance fees keep rising, partially as a result of a new local law that requires increased inspections and repairs for buildings. Local Law 11 boosted their maintenance by $462 a month, at least temporarily, to about $1,900 total. And when the building’s management installed a new security system, each unit had to chip in $95 a month for three months.
Ms. Hagan loves the apartment, but she worries that they may eventually be priced out of their neighborhood.
“This building isn’t going to be for us at some point,” she said. “This feels like, uh oh, they’re imagining people who have much higher incomes than we do.”
Keeping the Kids Busy
Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores, who each maintain packed calendars, have encouraged their daughters to adopt the same approach to city living.
“I’m definitely a proponent of, let’s fill your schedule and see what you love,” Ms. Hagan said.
The girls’ public school offers free debate and band classes before and after school, and they’ll appear this spring in the school’s productions of “Annie” and “The Addams Family.”
The girls are also enrolled in a free theater academy at the People’s Theatre and writing workshops at Uptown Stories, which has a pay-what-you-can system. Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores typically pay the full tuition, which is $800 for each 12-week session, and donate about $2,500 a year to the organizations their daughters are part of.
The couple’s older daughter, Araceli, who wants to be both a writer and a doctor, is enrolled in a medical training program for middle and high school students. She made $2,500 for completing an internship at a cardiothoracic intensive care unit last summer.
Their younger daughter, Miriam, is going to a Y.M.C.A. camp this summer, which costs $2,600 for two weeks.
Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores spent about $500 total on holiday gifts for both girls, and the couple doles out their daughters’ weekly allowances in two installments: $25 on Mondays and $25 on Fridays.
They shook their heads when Miriam, who is known as the most stylish member of the family, came home one day wearing a Dr Pepper T-shirt she’d bought at Target.
“We were like, ‘What are you doing with your money?’” Ms. Hagan said.
The Fun Stuff
The extra income from the couple’s freelance work allows the family to splurge on theater, vacations, books and memberships at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Sometimes, Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores work together. A few years ago, they sold a young adult novel called “Tell Me Every Lie” they had co-written for a $35,000 advance, some of which went to their agent.
Every little bit helps. The family is spending a weekend on Long Beach Island in New Jersey this summer, which will cost about $3,500. That price tag includes a hotel room big enough for four.
The family typically travels twice a year to Kentucky, where both Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores are from, and where the couple co-owns a home in Louisville with Mr. Flores’s parents. They put $40,000 down and spend about $12,000 annually on expenses related to the home.
The family was hoping to travel to the Philippines this year, where Mr. Flores’s father is from, but they realized it could cost as much as $15,000. The trip is now on hold indefinitely.
They spend about $700 a month on groceries from nearby supermarkets, and occasionally order grocery deliveries from FreshDirect.
Every Wednesday, when the girls come home late from theater class, someone picks up dinner at the nearby halal truck or the Dominican restaurant Malecon, which usually runs about $60.
Dinner out as a family of four can easily cost $200, so Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores typically eat at restaurants just once or twice a month. The other night, the whole family was hungry and craved Italian food from a favorite upscale spot nearby.
They balked, and walked around the corner to a diner instead. The meal was $120, all in.
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a Democrat who has clashed with the Trump administration over immigration policies, joined protests outside a detention center in Newark on Monday in support of detainees participating in a hunger strike.
Ms. Sherrill heard from family members of detainees, who have complained about rotten and spoiled food and inadequate medical care at Delaney Hall. Dozens of protesters waved signs, banged on drums, and chanted “Free Them All!” The governor told the crowd she had requested access but was denied.
“No matter what your immigration status is, you shouldn’t be treated with anything less than dignity in this country,” said Ms. Sherrill, who was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and blue-gray jacket on the Memorial Day holiday. At one point, she rested her hand on the shoulder of a crying relative and smoothed the hair of an upset child.
After the governor left, the scene worsened outside the detention facility. A tense standoff erupted between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and protesters who blocked an entrance; the agents responded by firing pepper balls and spray at the protesters. Senator Andy Kim, who was trying to de-escalate the situation, was among those affected.
On Monday, the governor and other elected officials, including Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark, appeared outside Delaney Hall amid growing concerns over the hunger strike, which started on Friday inside the gray, cinder-block building enclosed by a high chain link fence topped with razor wire.
Immigration advocates have rallied outside Delaney Hall since Friday. Detainees said they would go on a hunger and labor strike while calling for an investigation of the detention center and its operations and for Ms. Sherrill to visit to discuss protections from ICE. Hundreds of detainees were participating, one protester told Ms. Sherrill.
The governor said in a statement on Sunday that she had contacted ICE to gain access to the detention center and was working to monitor the situation and “do what’s necessary to ensure humane conditions.”
At Monday’s protest, some protesters shouted in Ms. Sherrill’s face to criticize her for not showing up earlier in the weekend, like other elected officials had.
Representative Rob Menendez of New Jersey had arrived at 8 p.m. on Sunday and stayed all night until he was allowed into the center on Monday morning. Mr. Menendez said that he had spoken to some of the detainees inside Delaney Hall, including a young woman who just wanted to go to her high school graduation, a pregnant woman who was trying to get medical care, and a man who showed him a carton of milk that had gone rancid.
“I heard just desperation from so many people in there,” Mr. Menendez said afterward.
Angela Martinez told Ms. Sherrill that her cousin, Bolivar Bueno, 65, has diabetes and that she hasn’t been able to speak to him to make sure he is getting medication. “We don’t know what’s going on,” she told the governor.
Afterward, Ms. Martinez said, “I want for her to help me out.”
Ms. Sherrill left after about an hour, around 11:30 a.m., as some demonstrators jeered at her. Her security had to clear the road of a couple people who tried to stop her S.U.V. from leaving.
A few hours later, a convoy of ICE vehicles approached another entrance on the south side of Delaney Hall. Protesters, who had rallied at the north entrance in the morning, ran over to sit down in front of the vehicles. Many said they feared that the detainees on hunger strike inside would be transferred to other facilities.
ICE agents — most of whom were wearing face masks — pushed and shoved the protesters out of the way, even dragging one young man by a kaffiyeh around his neck. As the protesters chanted “Trump Has To Go,” they linked arms and faced the ICE agents.
The standoff prevented anyone from leaving through the south entrance. Soon after, a military-style vehicle moved toward that entrance, with a man on top holding a firearm pointed at demonstrators.
Senator Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, who had been allowed inside Delaney Hall, came out during the confrontation and walked over to support the protesters. Soon afterward, the ICE agents and military vehicles backed away from the entrance and slightly retreated toward to the detention center, but the standoff continued.
“They provoked it, they brought that tank over,” Mr. Kim said. “It’s getting worse and worse here.”
The senator said he was working to “de-escalate” the standoff through negotiations with federal officials and would push for families to be allowed to visit detainees as early as Tuesday. “I’m going to keep at it,” he said.
Not long after, the standoff escalated with ICE agents using pepper balls and mace on the crowd.
It’s not the first time Delaney Hall has faced protests. In June 2025, four men escaped from the detention center after days of unrest over meager and sporadic meals and overcrowding that forced some detainees to sleep on the floor. Detainees had smashed windows, doors and security cameras.
And Mr. Baraka, the Newark mayor, was arrested in May 2025 during a clash with federal agents outside its gates last year.
Dakota Santiago contributed reporting.
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