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They Help Make the Hamptons the Hamptons, and Now They’re Living in Fear

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They Help Make the Hamptons the Hamptons, and Now They’re Living in Fear

The party dresses must be double-pressed, the hedges shaved into sharp rectangles. The hand soap and lotion dispensers must be formed into neat lines along bathroom sinks. Caterers need to slip out of view as soon as the oysters and cocktails are served.

Wealthy residents of the Hamptons demand perfection. Now, many of the people who make it so — Latino immigrants, some of them undocumented — are panicking about President Trump’s deportation orders.

The fear is on display outside a convenience store where day laborers sprint into a nearby field when a stranger approaches. It is present in the nervous apologizing of a longtime housekeeper when she interacts with the police after a minor automobile scrape. And it courses through a small encampment in the woods where a landscaper is awaiting warmer weather so he can start cutting grass again to send money home to his family in Mexico.

“Everybody is living in fear,” said Sandra Melendez, a trustee for the village of East Hampton and an immigration lawyer. “They think Immigration is coming out to get them.”

In recent weeks, President Trump has begun carrying out his plan for mass deportations across the nation, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents forcing undocumented immigrants back to their countries of origin.

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Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, and federal officers arrived in New York City last month in a show of force that resulted in more than three dozen arrests. While it is unclear whether arrests are being executed in New York en masse, the actions have terrified people who work in factories, farms and schools.

In the Hamptons, with miles of privet hedges and luxury homes, Latino immigrants make up the bulk of the work force, logging 12-hour days flipping mattresses, scrubbing toilets and hanging drywall, and in the summer tending vineyards and assembling patio furniture under the hot sun.

Some of the workers arrived illegally, crossing the U.S. border after grueling desert or jungle treks. Some have legal working papers but are worried they could be swept up in raids or that their undocumented family members and friends could. Some believe President Trump is only going after criminals; others aren’t sure that’s true.

Latinos also are an established part of the Hamptons community. In the town of East Hampton, which encompasses many of the villages at the east end of Long Island, Latinos make up more than a quarter of the population, according to U.S. census figures. The student population in several local schools is more than half Latino.

But to most of the world, the Hamptons are best known for celebrity-studded parties and mega-mansions that dot the seashore, such as one house in Sagaponack that has been valued at $425 million and has 29 bedrooms and 39 bathrooms. It’s a community where diner patrons wear Balenciaga booties and Aston Martin sports cars cruise past strip malls. On sale at one popular grocery store: an 18-ounce tin of caviar for $1,300.

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The disappearance of some of the Hamptons’ most vulnerable residents would have an immediate effect on some of the nation’s wealthiest.

“The community on the East End of Long Island — it’s an understatement to say it’s way dependent on the Latino population,” said Lee Skolnick, a celebrated architect who lives in Sag Harbor. “They’re part of the community. They have as much of a role in our beneficial existence as anyone else.”

Last fall, billionaire hedge fund managers, financiers and various glitterati hosted fund-raisers there for both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, though voters across much of the Hamptons favored Kamala Harris in November. If some residents support President Trump’s broad crackdown on illegal immigrants, most couch it in terms of deporting violent criminals.

Local officials have tried to calm the worries of the people who make the Hamptons the Hamptons, both undocumented workers and wealthy residents. At public meetings they have explained that the local police don’t have the authority to deport anyone, urging anyone who needs police or medical help to feel safe seeking it out.

But officials are carefully choosing their words to indicate that they won’t stand in the way should ICE agents arrive.

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“I don’t think there’s anybody who wants criminals living in our community,” said Jerry Larsen, mayor of East Hampton village. “Everybody is on the same page for that. But the misinformation is driving the fear, and that’s what we’re aiming to clear up.”

Residents who had been working to find more affordable housing for local workers are shifting their efforts to finding legal help for immigrants who are afraid.

Some, like Prudence Carabine, believe the local government should provide that assistance. At a public meeting of East Hampton town officials earlier this month, she laid out her case.

“I think of my friends and people who have been in this town for 30, 40, 50 years who are now huddling in their houses, sometimes keeping their children out of school, afraid to shop,” said Ms. Carabine, whose family arrived in the Hamptons from Europe in the 1600s. “And I think: What a terrible place we have come to.”

The special symbiosis of the Hamptons is on display every morning and evening, when long lines of pickup trucks clog Montauk Highway, shuttling Latino workers between job sites and homes in less expensive areas. Some residents call it “the trade parade,” a phrase that some workers consider derisive.

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But Latinos in the Hamptons are more than a commuter population. They own popular businesses such as John Papas Cafe, a Greek diner offering a $21.50 Parthenon omelet. The owner, from Ecuador, started as a kitchen worker, employees said, and worked his way up.

Leo Cruz arrived in the United States from Costa Rica in 2007 on a tourist visa and has since become a U.S. citizen. He and his siblings own Cruz Brothers Construction, an East Hampton firm that works on high-end projects. Mr. Cruz opposes open borders but thinks there should be an easier pathway to citizenship for immigrants who can contribute to American society.

His firm can’t find enough workers at the moment, he said.

The area is quiet now, with snow blanketing vineyards and beaches. Lobster shacks and ice cream shops are shuttered. Rows of small trees and bushes are wrapped snugly in covers to protect them from the elements.

In Latino neighborhoods, fewer people are shopping at the Mexican, Ecuadorean and Dominican markets and eating in the diners thumping with cumbia music tucked out of sight from the luxury stores and fine dining establishments.

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Some of the wealthy are quietly beginning to make calculations about what it would mean if their undocumented workers were deported. Who would mow the lawn?

“Everyone relies on housekeepers and carpenters and tree cutters and grass cutters,” said Marit Molin, founder and executive director of Hamptons Community Outreach. “People come to the Hamptons to enjoy their houses, and who is going to take care of their houses?”

Local institutions have made efforts to connect with the Latino community. The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill offers Latino-themed exhibitions and student programs that include Latino children. A prominent cultural organization called The Church in Sag Harbor has made efforts to reach Latinos through community events.

But many Latino residents here are largely segregated from their wealthy, mostly white neighbors. Some live on the fringes, sharing tiny rooms or riding bikes to day laborer pickup sites an hour away.

On a recent afternoon, Ms. Molin visited a small group of undocumented immigrants who had been living under a tarp in the woods behind an ice cream shop until a manager there threatened to call the police. The group moved into the trees elsewhere, nearly in the back yard of an upscale restaurant.

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One of the men living in the woods is a landscaper waiting for summer jobs; another lost his job at a deli after he took time off to treat an injury; another suffers stomach pain and cannot work. They spend their days wandering through stores, warming up and charging their phones. Ms. Molin handed them gift cards for food and offered to pay cellphone bills and even purchase plane tickets to their home countries if they wanted to go. None did.

Some Hamptons workers who are in the country legally have spent tens of thousands of dollars to file immigration paperwork but are afraid that they might be harassed or detained regardless of their status.

One woman, a housekeeper, said that while she could support her family in Ecuador, she did not have the money for a lawyer to help expedite her political asylum case. She also worries that if she shows up to court, she might be deported. She said she was so exhausted by anxiety that she felt ready to leave the country if she was ordered to do so.

Another cleaner said that she did not believe she would be deported because her boyfriend is an American citizen and her four children were born in the United States. Besides, she said, she believes Mr. Trump is detaining only criminals.

Both women asked not to be identified because of the stigma of deportation threats.

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Susan Meisel, an art collector who owns a Bridgehampton restaurant, said she too believed that federal officers would be able to weed out criminals and deport them.

“Most of the people in the Hamptons are very hardworking, kind, honest people,” she said, speaking of Latino immigrants. “They are good people. There is a difference between them and who they say they are going to deport.”

Federal officials have said they intend to prioritize undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. But Mr. Trump has also said that he would deport millions of people who are living in the country illegally — a characterization that is complicated because many immigrants have temporary permissions that will expire during Mr. Trump’s term.

Some of the Hamptons’ wealthier residents have begun raising money for lawyers to help immigrants avoid an ICE dragnet.

“I’ve been trying to encourage people to give a little more money, even if you’re a little more stretched,” said April Gornik, a well-known landscape painter who lives in Sag Harbor with her husband, the artist Eric Fischl.

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Minerva Perez, the executive director of Organización Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island, an advocacy group, said school districts and police departments should distribute clearer policies in both English and Spanish about how they plan to respond to federal immigration orders so that residents feel informed.

“There’s sometimes a good degree of empathy,” she said, adding, “In this moment, empathy is not enough.”

Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting.

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They Witness Deaths on the Tracks and Then Struggle to Get Help

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They Witness Deaths on the Tracks and Then Struggle to Get Help

‘Part of the job’

Edwin Guity was at the controls of a southbound D train last December, rolling through the Bronx, when suddenly someone was on the tracks in front of him.

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He jammed on the emergency brake, but it was too late. The man had gone under the wheels.

Stumbling over words, Mr. Guity radioed the dispatcher and then did what the rules require of every train operator involved in such an incident. He got out of the cab and went looking for the person he had struck.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Mr. Guity said later. “But this is a part of the job.”

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He found the man pinned beneath the third car. Paramedics pulled him out, but the man died at the hospital. After that, Mr. Guity wrestled with what to do next.

A 32-year-old who had once lived in a family shelter with his parents, he viewed the job as paying well and offering a rare chance at upward mobility. It also helped cover the costs of his family’s groceries and rent in the three-bedroom apartment they shared in Brooklyn.

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But striking the man with the train had shaken him more than perhaps any other experience in his life, and the idea of returning to work left him feeling paralyzed.

Edwin Guity was prescribed exposure therapy after his train struck a man on the tracks.

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Hundreds of train operators have found themselves in Mr. Guity’s position over the years.

And for just as long, there has been a path through the state workers’ compensation program to receiving substantive treatment to help them cope. But New York’s train operators say that their employer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has done too little to make them aware of that option.

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After Mr. Guity’s incident, no official told him of that type of assistance, he said. Instead, they gave him the option of going back to work right away.

But Mr. Guity was lucky. He had a friend who had been through the same experience and who coached him on getting help — first through a six-week program and then, with the assistance of a lawyer, through an experienced specialist.

The specialist prescribed a six-month exposure therapy program to gradually reintroduce Mr. Guity to the subway.

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His first day back at the controls of a passenger train was on Thanksgiving. Once again, he was driving on the D line — the same route he had been traveling on the day of the fatal accident.

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Mr. Guity helps care for his 93-year-old grandmother, Juanita Guity.

M.T.A. representatives insisted that New York train operators involved in strikes are made aware of all options for getting treatment, but they declined to answer specific questions about how the agency ensures that drivers get the help they need.

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In an interview, the president of the M.T.A. division that runs the subway, Demetrius Crichlow, said all train operators are fully briefed on the resources available to them during their job orientation.

“I really have faith in our process,” Mr. Crichlow said.

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Still, other transit systems — all of which are smaller than New York’s — appear to do a better job of ensuring that operators like Mr. Guity take advantage of the services available to them, according to records and interviews.

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An Uptick in Subway Strikes

A Times analysis shows that the incidents were on the rise in New York City’s system even as they were falling in all other American transit systems.

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Source: Federal Transit Administration.

Note: Transit agencies report “Major Safety and Security Events” to the F.T.A.’s National Transit Database. The Times’s counts include incidents categorized as rail collisions with persons, plus assaults, homicides and attempted suicides with event descriptions mentioning a train strike. For assaults, The Times used an artificial intelligence model to identify relevant descriptions and then manually reviewed the results.

Bianca Pallaro/The New York Times

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San Francisco’s system provides 24-hour access to licensed therapists through a third-party provider.

Los Angeles proactively reaches out to its operators on a regular basis to remind them of workers’ compensation options and other resources.

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The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has made it a goal to increase engagement with its employee assistance program.

The M.T.A. says it offers some version of most of these services.

But in interviews with more than two dozen subway operators who have been involved in train strikes, only one said he was aware of all those resources, and state records suggest most drivers of trains that strike people are not taking full advantage of them.

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“It’s the M.T.A.’s responsibility to assist the employee both mentally and physically after these horrific events occur,” the president of the union that represents New York City transit workers, John V. Chiarello, said in a statement, “but it is a constant struggle trying to get the M.T.A. to do the right thing.”

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Video: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

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Video: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

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Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

Nearly 200 protesters tried to block federal agents from leaving a parking garage in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. The confrontation appeared to prevent a possible ICE raid nearby, and led to violent clashes between the police and protesters.

[chanting] “ICE out of New York.”

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Nearly 200 protesters tried to block federal agents from leaving a parking garage in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. The confrontation appeared to prevent a possible ICE raid nearby, and led to violent clashes between the police and protesters.

By Jorge Mitssunaga

November 30, 2025

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Video: New York City’s Next Super Storm

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Video: New York City’s Next Super Storm

new video loaded: New York City’s Next Super Storm

What’s a worst-case scenario for hurricane flooding in New York City? Our reporter Hilary Howard, who covers the environment in the region, explores how bad it could get as climate change powers increasingly extreme rainfall and devastating storm surges.

By Hilary Howard, Gabriel Blanco, Stephanie Swart and K.K. Rebecca Lai

November 26, 2025

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