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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.”
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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.
