For some Long Islanders, Riverhead can feel like a dot on a map: the place where the expressway ends, the farms begin and the road branches toward the vineyards of the North Fork and summer houses of the Hamptons.
To the people who help keep much of the East End running, it is a place to call home.
Generations of immigrant workers have come to Riverhead, as well as enclaves farther east, seeking work and a better life. The latest wave, mostly from Latin America, builds houses, staffs restaurants, tends farms and vineyards, and fills the manual labor and service jobs that sustain the region’s tourism industry and upscale properties.
Each morning, the cars of workers can be seen heading east on Sunrise and Montauk highways.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
Immigration and Customs Enforcement have arrested more people in Riverhead than any other place on the East End since the beginning of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Riverhead serves as a gateway to the East End and a critical hub for immigrants. One-third of residents in Riverhead, and two-thirds of students in Riverhead schools, are Latino.
Immigrant workers support industries key to the East End’s economy, like construction, restaurants, hospitality and farming.
"You see a ritzy mansion, it's not just the architect and the building companies that made that mansion possible, but it's the day laborers, construction workers doing the grunt work," said John Rizzo, an economics professor at Stony Brook University.
As the Trump administration continues its deportation crackdown, there have been more arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Riverhead than anywhere else on Long Island’s East End. It has become the epicenter of uncertainty for a population that helps make the region work and now lives in ICE's shadow.
Interviews with immigrants, advocates, educators and business owners point to a community adjusting in real time: workers skipping jobs when ICE is around, children anxious in school, court appearances missed, families making contingency plans. Even Latinos with legal status and U.S.-born family members report heightened anxiety, with fears of racial profiling and family separation.
Fewer athletes are playing soccer on Riverhead's fields and fewer fans are attending games because of ICE's presence, Newsday has reported. One immigrant was arrested when he showed up at the nearby court complex, which discouraged others from making their required appearances, advocates said.
Edgar Pocasangre and his family left El Salvador and moved to the North Fork when he was 12. Growing up farther east in Greenport, he said he felt welcomed and came to see the North Fork as a “safe haven.”
Now 30 and living in Riverhead, he commutes to Greenport to work as a manager in a restaurant. He has legal status and is pursuing citizenship, but he, like many, still finds the presence of ICE to be a heavy burden. He feels he could still be targeted because of the color of his skin.
"I'm not gonna lie, it's really scary stepping out there. I don't let fear stop me, because fear won't stop the bills," said Pocasangre, who in recent months began carrying his work documents with him. "It puts you in a spot where it's like, right, do I stay home to be safe, or do I go and work? Because I have to survive one way or another."
This gateway to the East End has become a crucialhub for immigrants like Pocasangre. Two-thirds of the students in Riverhead schools are Latino, figures show. According to the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce president, one-third of the businesses are owned by Latinos.
And over the last 35 years, the Latino population of Riverhead hamlet has skyrocketed from 2.5% in 1990 to 38% in 2020, according to U.S. Census data. Across Riverhead Town, which spans 67 square miles, one-fifth of residents are Hispanic or Latino, and 16% are foreign-born. A Guatemalan consulate office opened in Riverhead in 2021.
Since the deportation campaign began, residents across the East End have met in Riverhead to protest ICE and for "No Kings" rallies against the Trump administration. Earlier this year, about 300 students walked out of Riverhead High School to protest ICE. Latino students shared family stories — an uncle suddenly taken, a household upended, a sense that “their Latino identity is under attack,” said Oliver Earl, 18, who organized the protest.
"What's been going on in Riverhead has been pretty darn extreme, and in terms of how that's shaken up the community, I'll name that as one of the worst," said Minerva Perez, the executive director of OLA of Eastern Long Island, a nonprofit that serves Latinos and tracks ICE activity on the East End.
Pocasangre said: "I have had close friends who say, 'My mom decided to just go back home because she can no longer live in peace. She feels like there's a target on her back every day ... and she is scared of being deported.' And these are people that have been living here for years, that have been paying taxes for so many years, looking for a better future for their family."
ICE targets
Federal data released by the nonprofit Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Newsday shows 82 ICE arrests in the hamlet between Jan. 1, 2025, and Aug. 6, 2026, some of the nearly 3,000 ICE arrests reported on Long Island during that period.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said officers are “delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens” and that nearly 70% of those arrested overall have been charged with or convicted of crimes in the United States. The agency also highlighted five individuals arrested in Riverhead they said had prior criminal histories including assault, sexual offenses and domestic violence.
From February 2025 to March 10, less than 5% of immigrants held in the East Meadow jail, where about 3,200 people detained by ICE were housed during that time, had violent criminal convictions, a Newsday story reported.
Town government leaders have dismissed a growing campaign by the advocacy group OLA to help quell the growing fear sensed by immigrants who live there. The advocates want Riverhead Town to enact a bill establishing procedures for how the town's police and government respond to ICE activity, but the town board — controlled 4-1 by Republicans — has rejected the idea, Newsday has reported.
Trump won the town in the last three presidential elections, including with 57% of the town's vote in 2024, when the prospect of mass deportations was a fixture of his campaign.
Councilman Ken Rothwell, a Republican running for town supervisor, criticized what he described as a “false narrative” of fear promoted by local advocates.
"I don't see [ICE] as a negative factor,” Rothwell said. “I see that the individuals that they have picked up have been more high-profile individuals, and the streets are safer for removing them.”
Town Supervisor Jerry Halpin, an independent running on the Democrat line, has not taken a public stance on ICE. In an interview, he declined to discuss the impact of immigration agents on Riverhead and praised the town's police department for keeping people "as safe as possible."
The trade parade
Immigrants are part of “a critical workforce in contributing to the East End economy” who fill jobs in key sectors, said Martin Cantor, the former Suffolk County economic development commissioner.
While there are Latino enclaves in communities farther east — like in Hampton Bays, East Hampton and Greenport — it is also common for workers to live west of the forks and make hourslong commutes east. That’s due to affordability: The median home price in the Hamptons is more than $2 million, while the price in the Riverhead area is roughly $600,000, according to Redfin.
“Riverhead seems to be an affordable place where a lot of the household staff end up living, end up moving to” when working in the Hamptons, said Seth Norman Greenberg, the vice president and marketing director of Pavillion Agency, a domestic staffing business. Some clients have purchased homes in Riverhead to house workers, he added.
Lines of cars and trucks carrying workers from Riverhead, Hamptons Bays and other points west assemble on the South Fork’s roads each morning. This "trade parade” carries them to work in some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country.
Domestic workers — housekeepers, laundresses, nannies — are “very important” to Greenberg’s wealthy clients in the Hamptons, he said. “If their home and their refuge is not working at an optimal rate, they themselves are not able to be as productive as they could be.”
Latino immigrant workers are also key to construction, landscaping and other trades there, said Michael Forst, an East Hampton-based homebuilder.
“We need them there and we welcome them,” said Forst, who is the co-chair of the Long Island Builders Institute's East End Council. “They are great workers.”
Farming is another key industry on the East End, and is particularly significant in Riverhead Town, drawing people to fresh produce, local wines and farm-tourism attractions, where they devour sweet corn and take hayrides.
Immigrants are the backbone of that industry. Roughly 36% of land in the town — or more than 15,000 acres — is used for agriculture.
Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht, an organic farmer in Riverhead, uses the H2A visa program to hire her workers, who are currently from El Salvador, Mexico and South Africa.
“Our culture is a very labor-intensive business, and there's not a lot of Americans that want to do that type of work right now,” Kaplan-Walbrecht said.
Federal policy changes have also made it harder for those here legally to secure and keep work permits or green cards, or to obtain asylum, said David Sperling, an immigration lawyer with an office in Riverhead. A ban on the temporary protection afforded to Salvadorans, which took effect in September, was frozen but could still be enacted.
“They're just the kind of people that we need in this country, and they're being shunted aside and put in fear that [ICE] could come and pick them up,” he said.
A shadow on the community
An undocumented single mother is afraid to leave her home in Riverhead when ICE agents are in the area. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
Advocates and immigrants interviewed said working can sometimes mean putting their future, and the future of their families, on the line.
One 60-year-old man, an immigrant from Chile, spoke to Newsday on the condition of anonymity because he is in the country illegally. The man, who lives in Hampton Bays and is trying to obtain legal status, said the deportation campaign has made him more careful about where he does maintenance and construction jobs across the East End — and he avoids Riverhead the most because of reported raids there.
“We always expect the worst,” said the man, who crossed the border in 1996 and lived in North Carolina until losing his job and coming to Hampton Bays to build a house with a friend.
He counts himself “lucky“ he hasn’t encountered ICE, but he said he can’t avoid going out to get to his jobs.
“We have to keep going. We have to work,” he said. “I have clients that, obviously, I'm not going to tell them what my situation is, and I have to go and take the risk.”
Juana Cortes de Torres, director of the Immigrant Legal Rights Project at Rural & Migrant Ministry, an upstate New York nonprofit with an office in Riverhead, said ICE causes isolation and “a tremendous amount of anxiety" for immigrant families.
"There's also the possibility of family separation, and not only is it causing anxiety among the adults, but then also among children," she said.
I worry about going out because I may not return ... what will happen to my baby?
—36-year-old single mother and Riverhead resident from Honduras who is undocumented
One 36-year-old single mother, who is undocumented, spoke to Newsday on the condition of anonymity. She came from Honduras three years ago, leaving behind three adolescent children, and eventually joined a friend in Riverhead, where she was promised a job, she said. She now babysits and cleans homes for local families, sending money back to Honduras for her children's school, food, home repairs and other expenses.
“I miss them terribly,” she said of her children, “but it’s for their future.”
She now has an infant son, and the presence of ICE has made her more cautious. She begins each morning scouring social media posts about ICE and has often canceled work when agents are reported nearby.
“I worry about going out because I may not return,” she said. “If I go, what will happen to my baby?”
Latin American roots
Many Latinos are drawn to Riverhead and the East End for economic opportunity, as well as established community and family networks, immigration advocates say.
“These are folks who absolutely love the East End of Long Island. It is not an easy place to live. ... Many families have secured the ability to own a home. They have started businesses for decades and decades,” Perez said. “They are looking for a place to thrive and to have their children thrive.”
Roughly one-third of Riverhead's small businesses are owned by Latinos, Riverhead Chamber of Commerce president Connie Lassandro said. “They support the community financially and obviously in the workforce,” she added.
On West Main Street, Riverhead Multiservice provides basic goods, notary services, money transfers, travel assistance and more to Latino community members. Erika Mera, whose family opened the store in 1996, said customers often stay away when ICE activity is reported.
“When we find out that ICE is around … we definitely see a trend that no one comes in,” Mera said.
Erika Mera, manager at Riverhead Multiservice, with a customer. “When we find out that ICE is around … no one comes in,” she said. Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost
In recent months, she said, the shop has become a place where customers quietly prepare in case they get detained.
Parents ask about power of attorney so someone can care for their children if they are detained; others come in to purchase one-way international tickets after years — sometimes decades — in the United States, Mera said.
“We've also had people buying tickets one-way, going back after 20 years, 16 years,” she said. “That kind of decision … it hurts with the families falling apart or being apart.”
Despite the fear of some immigrant residents, "most of the Hispanic businesses are doing well," Lassandro, from the Chamber of Commerce, said.
She pointed to the success of stores like Mexicandy, a Mexican ice cream and street food shop that opened downtown in 2023. Many evenings, the shop is packed with Latino families satiating their sweet tooths, and owner Christopher Aguilar, of Riverhead, recently opened a second store roughly 1½ miles away because of its popularity.
Courts, schools impacted
Advocates say an ICE arrest near the Arthur Cromarty Court Complex in Riverhead has discouraged immigrants from attending court hearings. Credit: Thomas Hengge
The Arthur Cromarty Court Complex draws hundreds to the Riverhead area, including immigrants, for civil and criminal matters. But even some of those attending that facility have been impacted by ICE.
In February, agents arrested a Flanders resident after he left the courthouse. Advocates say the arrest discouraged some residents from attending court hearings. The concern is especially acute in Family Court, which handles cases of domestic and child abuse.
The presence of ICE puts victims of abuse in an “impossible spot” when they are seeking an order of protection, said Pamela Greinke, director of the domestic abuse support nonprofit Hope and Resilience Long Island.
“Knowing that you might continue to be abused … but that your alternative might be to get picked up and deported — that's a decision that no one should have to make,” Greinke said.
The Riverhead Central School District, the largest on the East End, serves a student population that is roughly two-thirds Latino or Hispanic, according to state data. About 34% of students are English language learners.
Earlier this year, about 300 students walked out of Riverhead High School to protest ICE. Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost
“Kids are crying during the day. Kids are distracted. They're fearful for parents coming to open house,” said a teacher of English as a new language, who requested anonymity because the instructor was not authorized to speak.
In Riverhead schools, immigration-related stress is treated like any other major life crisis, said Riverhead High School social worker Nathaly Ventura.
Staff provide counseling, regular check-ins and connections to outside resources to students who seek support, including food assistance and mental healthcare, Ventura said.
“Is there fear? Absolutely,” Ventura said, describing what she sees among Latino students. “Are they still showing up? Absolutely.”
At the Riverhead Charter School, Superintendent Raymond Ankrum said some students arrive worried about whether their families will remain intact. The K-12 charter school, with campuses in Calverton and Northville, instructs children from districts across eastern Long Island and is roughly 72% Latino or Hispanic, according to state data.
Reports of enforcement activity near a bus stop earlier this year heightened anxiety among parents and students, Ankrum said. Staff have taken on expanded roles, providing counseling and crisis support.
“Children must be allowed to be children, and their psychological safety should be absolute,” he said in a statement.
Pocasangre, who graduated from Greenport High School and the John Jay School of Criminal Justice, said the prospect of leaving Riverhead is frightening.
“This may not be my home country,” he said, "but it is my home."
Riverhead / East End https://www.eastendbeacon.com/watch-no-kings-greenport-march/ No Kings is about defending the ideals we fought for. This country doesn’t belong to strongmen. It belongs to the people. As the spirit moves, and the body permits (about two miles) 12 p.m. Student led march from Riverhead High School to Town Hall click here for map https://nokingsrh.blogspot.com/2026/03/map-of-march.html 1 p.m. Town Hall, 4 West Second Street Call on the Board to respond to ICE and adopt the OLA legislation 1:10 p.m. March to Suffolk County Supreme Court click here for map https://nokingsrh.blogspot.com/2026/03/map-of-march.html 1 :30 – 2:30 p.m. Mass Rally Suffolk County Supreme Court, 235 Griffing Avenue No ICE, no illegal wars! Protect our freedoms, environment and elections. March 28 Rally 1:...
March 28 Riverhead Rally (order subject to change) 1:25 Paul Henry, singer 1:35 John McAuliff, Welcome 1:40 Chip Williford, Suffolk County Poet Laureat 1:45 Father Bohdan Hedz, St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, invocation 1:50 Faith Welch, Greenport High School student 1:55 Irma Solis, New York Civil Liberties Union-Suffolk Regional Office 2:05 Alma Tovar, OLA of Eastern Long Island 2:15 Paul Henry, singer 2:20 Ollie Earl, Riverhead High School student 2:25 Rev, Roger Joslin , Vicar, The Church of the Holy Trinity Greenport and The Church of the Redeemer, Mattituck 2:30 Kathryn Szoka, Progressive East End Reformers PEER/NYPAN 2:35 Andrew Leven, Of Counsel Eilworth Paxson, former Federal Prosecutor 2:40 Father John Cervini, St. John the Evangelist, benediction 2:45 Brienne Ahearn, Wrap up (both Tow...
Riverhead No Kings is an evolving ad hoc group of activists that has organized rallies, marches and roadside vigils for every nationallyscheduled protest. for further information riverheadnokings@gmail.com text or call 917-859-9025 Local Morning Actions Across the East End In addition to the Riverhead regional gathering, community members are organizing neighborhood demonstrations, visibility actions, and voter outreach activities throughout the East End on October 17. Riverhead 9 - 11:30 a.m. Jamesport Post Office, 1451 NY 25 10 a.m.–12 p.m. — East End Visibility Brigade, NY-25/W. Main Street bridge at Exit 72 over the Long Island Expressway (I-495) Southampton 10 a.m.–12 p.m. — Agawam Park Hampton Bays 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m. — Macy's, 190 W. Montauk Highway Greenport 11:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m. — 302 Main Street, during the Annual Maritime Festival Sag Harbor 12–1 p.m. — The Windmill Amagansett 11 a.m.–5 p.m. — IGA 11 a.m. - ? Amagansett Square sidewalk East Hampton 9 a.m.–10 a....
Comments
Post a Comment