New York
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
Afraid to go out
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
New York
Essential New York City Movies Picked by Ira Sachs and Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein
Film
‘Make Way for Tomorrow’ (1937), directed by Leo McCarey
The log line: After the bank forecloses on their home, an elderly couple must separate, each living with a different one of their adult children.
The pitch: “It’s a film that Orson Welles famously said ‘would make a stone cry,’” says Sachs, 60, about McCarey’s movie, singling out a long sequence at the end that depicts “a date through certain lobbies and bars of New York City that offers a snapshot of Midtown in the ’30s.”
‘The World of Henry Orient’ (1964), directed by George Roy Hill
The log line: A wily 14-year-old girl and her best friend follow a ridiculous concert pianist, on whom they have a crush, around the city.
The pitch: Hill’s 1960s romp inspired Sachs’s film “Little Men” (2016), which is about boys around the same age as these protagonists. “It’s an extraordinarily sweet film that also seems, to me, very honest,” he says.
‘Coming Apart’ (1969), directed by Milton Moses Ginsberg
The log line: Rip Torn plays an obsessive psychiatrist who secretly films all the women passing through his home office, inadvertently capturing his own mental breakdown.
The pitch: Shot in one room with a fixed camera, Ginsberg’s film “really feels of a time,” says Sachs. It’s also “very sexual and very free,” reminding him of what’s possible when it comes to making movies.
‘Deadly Hero’ (1975), directed by Ivan Nagy
The log line: A disturbed, racist cop saves a cellist from a crook, only to become her tormentor.
The pitch: Harry, 80, and Stein, 76, were extras in Nagy’s film, which stars Don Murray, Diahn Williams and James Earl Jones as the cop, the cellist and the crook, respectively. The pair call the movie “[expletive] weird,” but also say that their day rate — $300 — “was the most money we’d ever made on anything” up to that point.
‘News From Home’ (1976), directed by Chantal Akerman
The log line: An experimental documentary by Akerman, a Belgian filmmaker who moved to New York in her early 20s, the film features long takes of the city and voice-over in which the director reads letters from her mother.
The pitch: “I’m intrigued by how beauty contains sadness in the city,” says Sachs. Not only is her film a “beautiful record of the city” but it captures “what it is to be alone here, to have left some sort of community and, in particular for Chantal, separated from her mother.”
‘Wolfen’ (1981), directed by Michael Wadleigh
The log line: Albert Finney stars as a former N.Y.P.D. detective who returns to the job to solve a violent and bizarre string of murders.
The pitch: Wadleigh’s film is not only a vehicle for Finney, says Stein, it also “has a lot of footage from the South Bronx when it was still completely destroyed” by widespread arson in the 1970s.
‘Losing Ground’ (1982), directed by Kathleen Collins
The log line: Collins’s film — the first feature-length drama for a major studio directed by an African American woman — observes a rocky relationship between a college professor and her painter husband.
The pitch: Sachs calls “Losing Ground” “a revelation.” The characters are “so human and fascinating and extremely modern,” he says, adding that he loves a movie that “exists in some very complete version of the local.”
‘After Hours’ (1985), directed by Martin Scorsese
The log line: In Scorsese’s black comedy, an office worker (Griffin Dunne) has a surreal and bizarre evening of misadventure while trying to get back uptown from a woman’s apartment in SoHo.
The pitch: Harry and Stein recommend this zany tale and borderline “nightmare” for the way it captures a bygone era of New York. “It’s this great image of [Lower Manhattan] when it was still raw, you know, Wild West territory,” Stein says.
‘Downtown 81’ (shot in 1980-81, released in 2000), directed by Edo Bertoglio
The log line: Bertoglio’s film is a striking portrait of a young artist who needs to raise money so he can return to the apartment from which he’s been evicted.
The pitch: Jean-Michel Basquiat stars as the artist in this snapshot of life in New York during the ’80s. Despite all the drama surrounding it — postproduction wasn’t completed until 20 years after filming, and for many years the movie was considered lost — the film is notable, says Stein, because “it’s got all the characters and all our buddies in it.”
These interviews have been edited and condensed.
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New York
13 Actors You Should Never Miss on the New York Stage
Theater
Quincy Tyler Bernstine
A master of active stillness, the 52-year-old Bernstine (imposing in the 2024 revival of John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt,” above) has that great actorly gift of making thought visible. A natural leader onstage, she compels audiences to follow her.
Victoria Clark
One of the theater’s best singing actors, with Tonys for Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s “The Light in the Piazza” (2005) and David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori’s “Kimberly Akimbo” (above, 2022), Clark, 66, performs not on top of the notes but through them, delivering complicated characterization and gorgeous sound in each breath.
Susannah Flood
Flood, 43, is a true expert at confusion, a good thing because she often plays characters like the twisted-in-knots Lizzie in Bess Wohl’s “Liberation” (above, 2025). What makes that confusion thrilling is how she grounds it not in a lack of information or purpose but, just like real life, in an excess of both.
Jonathan Groff
The rare musical theater man with the unstoppable drive of a diva, Groff, 41, sweats charisma, as audience members in ringside seats at Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver’s Broadway musical “Just in Time” (above, 2025) recently discovered. Giving you everything, he makes you want more.
William Jackson Harper
Unmoored characters are often unsympathetic. But whether playing a confused doctor in the 2024 revival of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” or a delusional bookstore clerk in Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust” (above, 2023), Harper, 46, makes vulnerability look easy, and hurt hard.
Joshua Henry
There are singers who blow the roof off theaters, but the 41-year-old Henry’s voice is so huge and deeply connected to universal feelings that he seems to be singing inside you. Currently starring in the Broadway revival of “Ragtime” (above, by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty and Terrence McNally), he blows the roof off your head.
Mia Katigbak
Superb and acidic in almost any role — in distress (Annie Baker’s 2023 “Infinite Life,” above) or in command (2024’s “Uncle Vanya”) — Katigbak, 71, finds the sweet spot in even the sourest truths of the human condition.
Judy Kuhn
With detailed intelligence and specific intention informing everything she sings, Kuhn, 67, is (among other things) a Stephen Sondheim specialist — her take on Fosca in “Passion” (above, 2012) was almost literally wrenching. It requires intellectual stamina to keep up with the master word for word.
Laurie Metcalf
The fierce, sharp persona you may know from her years on “Roseanne” (1988-97) is about a tenth of the blistering commitment Metcalf, 70, offers onstage in works like Samuel D. Hunter’s “Little Bear Ridge Road” (above, 2025). She goes there, no matter the destination.
Deirdre O’Connell
For 40 years an Off Broadway treasure, O’Connell, 72, handles the most daring, out-there material — including, recently, a 12-minute monologue of cataclysmic gibberish in Caryl Churchill’s “Kill” (above, 2025) — as if it were as ordinary as barroom gossip.
Conrad Ricamora
Revealing the Buddy Holly in Benigno Aquino Jr. (in the 2023 Broadway production of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s “Here Lies Love”) or the queer wolf in Abraham Lincoln (in Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!,” above, last year), Ricamora, 47, is uniquely capable of great dignity and great silliness — and, wonderfully, both together.
Andrew Scott
It’s a tough competition, but Scott, 49, may have the thinnest skin of any actor. Whether he’s onstage (playing all the characters in Simon Stephens’s Off Broadway “Vanya,” above, in 2025) or on film, every emotion — especially rue — reads right through his translucence.
Michael Patrick Thornton
Some actors are hedgehogs, projecting one idea blazingly. Thornton, 47, is a fox, carefully hoarding ideas and motivations. Keeping you guessing as Jessica Chastain’s benefactor in the 2023 revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” or as a pathetic lackey in last year’s production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” (above, center), he holds you in his thrall.
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New York
How a Geologist Lives on $200,000 in Bushwick, Brooklyn
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?
Here’s one way to make New York more affordable: triple your income. After moving from Baton Rouge, La., in 2016 to attend graduate school, Daniel Babin lived mostly on red beans and rice or homemade “slop pots,” renting rooms in what he called a “cult house” and a building on a block his girlfriend was afraid to visit.
Then, in January, he got a job as a geologist with a mineral exploration company, with a salary of $200,000, plus a $15,000 signing bonus. A new city suddenly opened up to him. “I can take a woman out on a $300 dinner date and not look at the check and not feel bad about it,” he said. He also now has health insurance.
Mr. Babin, 32, a marine geologist who also leads an acoustic string band, now navigates two economic worlds, one shaped to his postdoctoral income of $70,000 a year — when his idea of a date was a walk in Central Park — and the other reflecting his new income. In this world, he is shopping for a vintage Martin Dreadnought guitar, for which he will gladly drop $4,000.
Finding a New Base Line
On a recent morning at Mr. Babin’s home in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where he shares a 6,800-square-foot cohousing space with 17 roommates, he was still figuring out how to manage this split.
“I’m feeling less inclined to just let it rip than I was a few months ago,” he said of his spending habits. He socks away $1,500 from each paycheck, and has not moved to replace his 2003 Toyota Corolla, an “absolute dump” given to him by his father. “Hopefully, I’m returning a little bit to some kind of base-line lifestyle that I’ve established for myself over the last five years,” he continued. “Because the fear is lifestyle inflation. You don’t want to just make more money to spend more money. That’s not the point, right?”
Lightning Lofts, the cohousing space where Mr. Babin has lived since January 2024, bills itself as part of a “social wellness movement” and seeks to continue the ethos of Burning Man, the annual communal art and cultural festival in the Nevada desert.
For a room with an elevated loft bed and use of common areas, Mr. Babin pays $1,400 a month in rent, plus another $250 for utilities and weekly housecleaning.
He was first drawn to the organization through its events, including open mic “salons” where he played music or read from his science fiction writings. These were free or very cheap nights out, unpredictable and fascinating.
“You would see dance and tonal singing, and some dude wrote an algorithm that can auto-generate A.I. video based on what you’re saying — beautiful storytelling,” he said.
“So I just showed up every month, basically, until they let me live here.”
The room was a good deal. He had looked at a nearby building where the rent was $1,900 for a room in a basement apartment that flooded once a month. “Ridiculous,” he said.
But beyond its financial appeal, Mr. Babin liked the loft’s social life. “I used to be chronically lonely, and I just don’t feel lonely anymore,” he said. “Which is fantastic in a crazy place like New York. It’s so alive and it’s so isolating at the same time.”
Splurging on Ski Trips
Before Mr. Babin got his new job, he used to go to restaurants with friends and not eat, trying to save up $35 for a “burner” party — in the spirit of Burning Man — or Ecstatic Dance, a recurring substance-free dance party. He loved to ski but could not afford a hotel, so he would carry his old skis and beat-up boots to southern Vermont and back on the same day.
“Going on a hike is a pretty cheap hobby,” he said, recalling his money-saving measures. “Living without health insurance is a good one.”
He still appreciates a good hike, he said. But on a recent ski trip, he splurged on new $700 boots and another $300 worth of gear. “I’m like, this is something I’ve wanted for 10 years, so I deserve it,” he said.
He bought a $600 drone to take pictures for his social media accounts, and then promptly crashed it into the Caribbean (he’s now replacing the rotors in hopes of returning it to health).
He cut out the red beans and rice, he said, but his usual meal is still a modest $13 sandwich from the nearby bodega or $10 for pizza. “If I’m getting takeout and it’s less than $17, I don’t feel too bad about it,” he said.
A Future After Cohousing
A big change is that dating is much more comfortable now, and he feels more attractive as a marriage prospect. “It turns out that a lot more people pay attention to you if you offer them dinner instead of a walk in the park,” he said.
He is now thinking of leaving the cohousing space — not just because he can afford to, but because his work has kept him from joining house events, like the regular potluck dinners. “I sometimes feel like a bad roommate, because part of being here is participating,” he said. “I feel like there might be someone who would enjoy the community aspect more than I’m capable of contributing right now.”
He sounds almost wistful in discussing his former economizing. If it weren’t for the dating issue, he said, he would not need the higher income or lifestyle upgrades. “I never really felt like I was compromising on what I wanted to do,” he said.
He paused. “It’s just that what I was comfortable with has changed a little bit.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
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