How ICE raids are changing Long Island's largest Latino community. 'You get used to the trauma.'

When ICE agents pull into La Placita strip mall, a gathering place for day laborers in Brentwood and a hot spot for immigration raids, the men hoping to get hired run inside the stores and lock the doors behind them. 

Anti-ICE activists often show up to explain the men's legal rights to them and hand out whistles to blow if agents are seen on the hunt. And afterward, business plummets throughout the mall. On a recent morning, one restaurant owner there looked out despondently at just two customers. 

A year and a half into what President Donald Trump says will be the largest deportation campaign in the nation's history, such scenes are now part of everyday life in Brentwood. The most heavily Latino community in New York State, at 76%, has been forever changed.

The place where voter support for Trump doubled over the last three presidential elections has become one of the biggest targets for ICE arrests.

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Raids and surveillance by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have provoked anger, torn apart families, altered daily routines and damaged local businesses, most of which are owned by Latinos, with employees and customers sometimes taken away by ICE, community leaders said.

For Central American immigrants who fled the horror of civil war for peace and safety in the United States, panic is persistent.

"It’s definitely taken a psychological toll on folks who now are always kind of looking behind them and just being more cautious of their surroundings and in fear of what could happen," Luis Montes, a Salvadoran immigrant and longtime Brentwood resident who is a political consultant, told Newsday. "It's really sad, especially given that they came fleeing conflict, hoping to have a better life, and instead now they're still full of that same fear."

Permanent trauma

Some in Brentwood welcome the president's stated goal of removing gang members and violent offenders — especially since many of the more recent immigrants left their countries to escape gang violence.

Others describe a changed but more united community, quieter but not silent, more cautious and less willing to gather in public. But there is also a spirit of resilience mixed with resignation, anger and an acceptance of a hard reality — that ICE agents will keep coming, but so will life. 

"You get used to the trauma," said Margarita Espada, a Brentwood activist and main organizer of the annual Puerto Rican/Hispanic Day Parade. "We live in trauma permanently."

Amid that trauma is a sense that Brentwood's Latino population, with a diverse range of cultures, foods and even languages, now shares a common bond of vulnerability with one another like never before, community leaders said. In many cases, residents have come together to defend and support each other.

Home to the third-highest number of Latinos in the state and founded in the mid-1800s as a haven for the open-minded, Brentwood serves as a microcosm of how the deportation campaign has upended day-to-day life throughout Hispanic communities in the region. So far, the campaign has led to the arrest and removal of more than 100 hamlet residents.

When attendance at last year's Puerto Rican/Hispanic Day Parade dropped to a new low of 30,000 people, it seemed then, as it does now, that everyone in town was a potential target, said Espada, who moved to New York from Puerto Rico in 1996.

"I’ve been a U.S. citizen my whole life," she said. "But there’s no difference to ICE when I’m standing in a bodega."

Neighborhoods under siege

Islip Town, which includes Brentwood, elected its first Latino Town Board member, Jorge Guadrón, in 2021. Phil Ramos, who moved to Brentwood with his family when he was 6 and still lives there, is the deputy speaker of the New York State Assembly.

But there remains a sense among local leaders they have been rendered powerless to stop Trump, whose share o f the vote in Brentwood went from 19% in 2016 to 39% in 2024, mirroring inroads he made among Latinos nationwide.

Brentwood is among Long Island’s biggest hot spots for ICE arrests, according to White House data. As of May, federal agents had arrested 102 immigrants there, compared with seven in nearby Ronkonkoma and nine in Deer Park. Other Long Island communities with large Latino populations have also been targeted, with 100 ICE arrests in Freeport and 235 in Hempstead.

The crackdown has left entire neighborhoods feeling something akin to being under siege. Several Brentwood residents told Newsday ICE agents have arrested many everyday residents without criminal records — among them landscapers, factory workers, restaurant cooks.

Jorge Mojica, 62, a native of Colombia who helps run a Brentwood rehabilitation program for alcoholics, told Newsday in Spanish outside his home that the campaign has "been way too extreme."

"These are my people," he said. "A lot of good people, with good hearts, who want to work."

He recalled seeing ICE agents detain a woman at a gas station while her children sat in the family car.

"Immigration has to do their job but not with a housewife with kids," he said.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, when asked about criticism that the crackdown is sweeping up many people with no criminal record in places including Brentwood, denied that is the case.

"ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, criminals, gang members and more," DHS Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement to Newsday. "In 2025, nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S."

Asked about what Trump calls the "worst of the worst," DHS listed five people they have detained in Brentwood on charges including larceny, assault, DUI and damaging property. One suspect was a member of MS-13, according to DHS.

While the federal government says the campaign is targeting dangerous, violent criminals, Newsday has reported that less than 5% of the thousands of immigrants held in the Nassau jail through County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s partnership with ICE were convicted of violent crimes. Suffolk County has no such partnership.

Ramos, the deputy speaker and Democrat who represents Brentwood, said the ICE crackdown has reunited most Latinos in the community.

"Those people who supported that MAGA movement in the beginning are seeing how it backfired on them," Ramos told Newsday.

Support for the crackdown

But the deportation campaign has found support in some sectors in Brentwood.

As he sat on a grassy spot beneath a street sign outside La Placita one afternoon in late July, Salvadoran immigrant Hember Gonzalez said, in Spanish, that he sees benefits to the crackdown.

"Things are better — one thousand times better," Gonzalez, 65, said. "The president is doing what he has to do. For me, it’s good."

Robberies, drug sales and public drunkenness were problems in Brentwood before, Gonzalez said, but he sees improvement.

"Those who don’t work, why are they here?" said Gonzalez, who immigrated to the United States from El Salvador in 1990 and has a green card.

Support of the crackdown represents something of a divide in the community and might be borne out of people's own experience coming to the United States, said Suffolk County Legis. Samuel Gonzalez, who represents Brentwood.

"Individuals who now have their papers to live here, to work here, they’re homeowners. ... They’re families with children that are going to college. Their [income] bracket is a little higher," Gonzalez said. They say, “ ‘I came here 10, 15, 20 years ago. I busted my rear end to get my papers in place. I got no help.’ ... And then they see in the news people are getting housing. ... They’re getting medical [support], they’re getting SNAP. ... Wouldn’t you feel upset?"

For Latinos in Brentwood without the means or legal immigration status, their trauma can seem never-ending, according to those who hear the stories firsthand, especially about parents separated from their children or fearing the possibility.

Brentwood-based immigration attorney Naresh Gehi and his firm have handled about 30,000 immigration cases in the past 30 years, he said. Since Trump's second term began, he's seen more families and single parents than ever start arranging for their children to be adopted so they can stay here if the parents get deported. The process can take up to four years, he said.

"Another word for deportation is 'destroying families,' " Gehi told Newsday. "If the husband or wife gets deported, and the child — who is born in America — is left in a vulnerable situation, without a mother or father. ... Basically the country is making that child live without a parent. That's a fundamental need of a child, to grow up with his parents. ... Are we not violating human rights here?"

Amid the constant disruption and uncertainty about what could come next, Espada, the parade organizer, said this past June's procession along Fifth Avenue revealed an otherwise disparate Latino community gaining strength and determination by coming together.

Even as the ICE campaign persisted, parade attendance and participation broke records this year, Espada said. Attendance jumped to 50,000, while the number of people marching went from 2,500 to 4,000, she said.

"They cannot take us and our joy," Espada said. "To see the resilience, and the pride of who we are as Latinos," is inspiring. "We go through everything — earthquakes, hurricanes, now ICE. We've gone through a lot, so let's celebrate."

Community on edge

The ICE presence has been, at times, pervasive.

"We've seen them loiter by supermarkets, by delis" in Brentwood, said Ahmad Perez, founder of Islip Forward, a nonprofit group that tracks ICE activity on Long Island, referring to federal agents. "We caught them outside the first day of school at Brentwood High School."

Perez said he can't forget the weeks and months after ICE agents began showing up. Some parents were so frightened, he said, they kept their children home from school.

"There were folks literally hiding their family members out in the basements of their homes," Perez told Newsday, "and fearful that immigration could be showing up."

He added that "literally every aspect of their life has kind of been upended by this enforcement crisis. And it's still not slowing down."

In February, Perez's group sent out 22 alerts after anger over ICE erupted one morning on a Brentwood street and a nearby convenience store parking lot. A pair of apparent ICE vehicles — both unmarked with heavily tinted windows — sat parked, its occupants unmoving, as more than two dozen residents spontaneously surrounded them.

The residents blew whistles, honked horns and yelled in Spanish and English for the apparent federal agents near a 7-Eleven on Wicks Road to get out of Brentwood. One man broadcast a livestream on Facebook urging others to join them.

"People of Brentwood, come out! La migra is here," he said, using the Spanish term for immigration agents.

The reaction of the community to ICE's presence that day was "extraordinary," Perez said, adding that it demonstrated how the deportation campaign, while injecting widespread fear, has also united much of Brentwood as people seek to protect one another.

"Residents came out in force, documented what was happening, warned their neighbors, and stood together — ultimately forcing ICE agents to leave the area," he said. "This is what community protection looks like."

Evading ICE

Jalline Guevara, 18, a recent graduate of Brentwood High School, said she has relatives in the community who are from El Salvador and are living here without legal authorization. For them, it's a daily game of evading ICE.

They find their way to work or to the market for food, but do little else outside their homes. They keep outings as short as possible. When going grocery shopping, they are in and out fast. Sunday trips to the park or other leisure outings no longer take place, Guevara said. They aren’t interested in meeting new people, instead sticking to a close circle of family and friends.

They continually check their phones for alerts from advocacy groups of ICE presence in Brentwood, she said. Some who already felt vulnerable to exploitation at work because of their immigration status now feel even more so.

They are even afraid to go to their job ... they are constantly on edge, and that’s no life to live.

—Jalline Guevara, 18, of Brentwood, speaking about the community

"They are even afraid to go to their job," Guevara said. "They are constantly in fear, they are constantly on edge, and that’s no life to live."

The current of uncertainty is far-reaching and touches nearly every aspect of daily life.

For residents trying to beat addiction, but in the country without legal papers, the threat of ICE arrest can keep them from doing what it takes to get sober, said Mojica, who runs the Brentwood rehabilitation program. Most are afraid to drive to meetings, usually held in homes including his, said Mojica, himself a Brentwood resident.

If someone with legal status can drive them, maybe they'll show up, he added. And if so, they go straight home afterward. It used to be, Mojica recalled, that the group would go to Dunkin’ or other public places after meetings to unwind and continue their discussions. No longer, he said.

A hamlet founded by immigrants

Some see irony in the history of Brentwood itself, founded by European immigrants.

They hacked through the sparsely populated pine barrens 175 years ago to create a place where people could think and worship as they please, said George Munkenbeck, the Islip Town historian. They even gave the new community of 150 residents a name bespeaking enlightenment — Modern Times.

That attempt at what the founders had envisioned would grow into a utopian society ended in 1864 amid the Civil War. Modern Times was renamed Brentwood after a town in England. 

A century later, Brentwood would be home to Pilgrim State Hospital, at one time the largest psychiatric medical facility in the country. It was this sprawling complex, in need of thousands of workers, that drew large numbers of Puerto Ricans, starting in the 1950s as they moved from New York City or Puerto Rico itself. 

Puerto Ricans would remain Brentwood’s dominant Hispanic community until the 1980s when an influx of Salvadorans, fleeing a brutal civil war, headed north. 

Four decades later, Salvadorans have supplanted Puerto Ricans as the largest Latino group in Brentwood, with 20,666 residents, according to 2020 U.S. Census figures, compared with 4,457 Puerto Ricans. The Salvadoran population grew to be so substantial that El Salvador for years had a consulate in Brentwood. The consulate moved to Plainview last year. Long Island, in fact, is home to one of the five largest Salvadoran populations in the United States, according to immigration experts.

Immigrants from other Central American nations, including Guatemala and Honduras, soon followed. More recent years have seen people arrive from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador.

Brentwood’s Latino population ballooned from 3,264 in 1970 to 47,072 in 2020, U.S. Census Bureau data shows. Some 76% of Brentwood’s 62,387 residents are Latino, soaring from 12% in 1970. Statewide, only Yonkers and New York City have larger numbers of Latinos.

Hispanic students make up 87% of the Brentwood Union Free School District.

An economy driven by Latinos

Brentwood's economic engine is powered by scores of Latino-owned and operated businesses, from chains like Dunkin' to supermarkets, restaurants and bodegas, delis, bakeries, beauty salons and clothing stores, said Bruce Fabrizio, president of the Brentwood Chamber of Commerce.

About 90% of Brentwood's businesses are owned by Latinos, some by longtime Puerto Rican residents and others by newer arrivals from El Salvador and other Latin American countries, he added.

"It's a multicultural area. You won't find as many different cultural restaurants on Long Island. ... Only New York City has more than Brentwood," Fabrizio said.

He said storefronts across the hamlet are near full capacity, with 98-99% of commercial leases occupied, though the deportation campaign has kept many people — and potential customers — away.

"The general feeling is people are staying home because of ICE," Fabrizio said.

At La Placita, a deli that is the namesake for the small Brentwood strip mall, business is down by 40%, said owner Nelson Peralta. A few stores away, at the Delicias restaurant, it's even worse. Business is down 80% some days, said owner Daniela Urena in Spanish as she looked out at just two customers for breakfast one day in early August. Before the crackdown, she would typically have 10 or 15 in to eat before starting their workday. She used to have three workers during the day, she said. Now it's down to one.

"We can't sustain it," said Urena, who is from the Dominican Republic. "If the businesses go down, the country goes down."

One recent morning, a handful of men waited outside the strip mall, hoping to be picked up for a day’s work in landscaping, construction or other labor. The site, a focal point for ICE raids in Brentwood, includes a restaurant, a bakery and a barber shop.

Compared with before Trump returned to the White House, the number of day laborers waiting for jobs each morning has dropped by more than half, they said. 

There used to be 30 to 40 men waiting each morning in the parking lot, Alex Alfaro, 35, who still waits for work outside La Placita, said in Spanish. Now, the number is typically maybe 15.

"There is fear," said Alfaro, a U.S. citizen of Salvadoran descent. "But they need money."

When agents show up, everyone runs into the stores and locks the doors, said Adonay Diaz, 27, who works in the barber shop.

Most of the businesses have signs posted on their doors or windows telling ICE — in English and Spanish — to stay out.

"No ICE access in this business," states one. "No law enforcement officers may enter these premises without a judicial warrant," says another.

On one side of the building, a painted mural shows an immigrant family walking to a new destination, Espada pointed out to Newsday, noting the irony that the mural has served as a backdrop to several ICE arrests made at the site.

Newsday's Payton Guion contributed to this report.