ICE traffic stops are making Long Island Latinos fearful behind the wheel — even citizens

Margarita Espada carries a copy of her passport while driving her white Honda SUV around Brentwood and Central Islip, and advises her adult children to do the same.

No matter that they’re all U.S.-born citizens. Living and working in two of the Long Island neighborhoods hit hardest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has heightened Espada’s anxiety.

"We always know that someone is checking on us," said the 60-year-old head of an art nonprofit, Teatro Yerbabruja, who is of Puerto Rican descent. "In any moment we can have an intervention or encounter with ICE."

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has reshaped life on Long Island for many immigrants, slowing foot traffic for small businesses, causing labor shortages and pushing migrant farmworkers back in the shadows. But for many local Latinos, it’s spurred a quieter unease about an unavoidable requirement: driving.

Federal agents’ reliance on traffic stops and parking lot surveillance in such a car-dependent region has brought new risk to many residents’ day-to-day routines: commuting to work, dropping kids at school or running errands.

Suddenly, a traffic stop could lead to detention and deportation or — if that's not a concern — just a traumatizing and potentially dangerous encounter.

Declarations filed in federal court show agents are regularly stopping people based on appearance, sometimes mistaking them for their targets but making arrests nonetheless if they're deemed to be undocumented.

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"You know at the end of the day you’re Puerto Rican and I have my passport, but I don't think that they can see the difference," Espada, who has lived on Long Island for 30 years, said of her complexion and accent, which indicate that she's Latina.

Though people born in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico have been U.S. citizens for more than 100 years, Espada — who helps organize Brentwood's annual Puerto Rican and Hispanic Day Parade — said carrying a copy of her passport is "a way to protect ourselves."

Concerns about ICE car stops came to a head over the summer after federal agents fatally shot drivers in Texas and Maine. After temporarily suspending stops, the agency was ordered not to make them unless agents complete certain training, The Associated Press reported in October. They’ve also been told not to engage in high-speed chases of drivers who flee.

Just last month, new protests arose after ICE agents near the border of Manhattan and the Bronx shot a 28-year-old driver while his 5-year-old son was in the backseat of the car. Authorities say the Dominican man entered the United States illegally and has a criminal record, including arrests for robbery and drug dealing.

While there’s no recent data to track whether Long Island’s Latinos are driving less, Newsday spoke with roughly two dozen attorneys, academics, advocates and immigrants of varied statuses and heard similar stories: the immigration crackdown is bringing changes to their routines and eliminating unnecessary car trips.

A National Immigration Law Center poll released last month found that 32% of Latino immigrants experienced emotional stress and anxiety from current policies, the most of any other group. 

Another nationwide poll, conducted in April by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that almost half of Hispanic adults polled have either started carrying proof of their immigration status or citizenship, or know someone who has.

More than a third of Hispanic adults said they or someone they know has significantly changed routines because of their immigration status.

Karen Tejada-Peña, a University of Hartford sociology professor who has studied Long Island's immigrant communities, said the region’s suburban makeup and car culture lends itself to a more subdued, profiling-based immigration enforcement approach that pushes people into hiding and distrusting institutions.

"People are so dependent on cars to be able to get to work, to home, leisure, errands, all of that," Tejada-Peña said. "I think it allows for that invisibility to happen because in no way are activists going to be able to be in every corner of Long Island."

A coalition of immigrant advocacy and civil rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court earlier this year against the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. The ongoing lawsuit, which includes plaintiffs from Long Island, alleges ICE's tactics are unlawful and amount to racial profiling.

After Democrats seized control of Congress, President Donald Trump told "60 Minutes" that his deportation policies may have been "too tough," but then he promoted the architect of those policies, Stephen Miller, as his new chief of staff.

Unease remains

ICE apprehended roughly 3,000 people on Long Island during the first eight months of this year, according to the most recent federal records obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Newsday. While immigration arrests have steadily decreased on Long Island in recent months compared with other parts of New York, an unease about driving remains.

Newsday reviewed roughly 400 petitions challenging immigrant detentions that were filed in federal court between January 2025 and June 2026 and found that in at least 84 of them, ICE arrested immigrants driving or riding in cars.

"It's not far-fetched ... that the Latino community is concerned about these traffic stops," said Jessica Orozco Guttlein, senior vice president for policy and communication at the Hispanic Federation, a national Latino advocacy nonprofit, noting that stops elsewhere have resulted in violent encounters and escalation.

The current immigration climate is prompting some parents to get state-issued, non-driver IDs for their teenage children so they have something to prove their identity if they’re stopped by law enforcement, Orozco Guttlein said.

"This is really reaching families in every way, every sense of the word. And at the end of the day, all families on Long Island, all families across the country, just want their children and their families to be safe," she added.

ICE arrested immigrants in cars on Long Island at least

84 times

between January 2025 and June 2026, according to a Newsday review of roughly 400 federal court petitions challenging immigrant detentions.

In an emailed statement, an ICE spokesperson said no one legally present in the United States should feel uneasy being pulled over.

"If stopped by immigration enforcement officials, everyone should cooperate peacefully and respectfully, as they would with any law enforcement official," the statement said. 

But Suffolk County Legis. Sam Gonzalez (D-Brentwood) said the people in his district, including U.S. citizens of Latino descent, have been anything but reassured over the last year, which he called "total chaos."

His office used to mostly field constituent requests like college recommendation letters and utility bill assistance. Now it fields calls asking if ICE is in the area, what someone should do if they're scared of taking their kid to school, or who will watch their children if they're detained. 

"The problem is that they will arrest based on what you look like, and they don't care," said Gonzalez, who is Puerto Rican. "The way you carry yourself is not the way you carried yourself in the past. You have to be more careful."

Concerns heightened for noncitizens

In 2019, New York State passed a law allowing noncitizens to apply for driver's licenses. Finally, some immigrants told Newsday, they had a document to show law enforcement if they were stopped, giving them some peace of mind.

But that confidence is waning.

Newsday spoke to a range of Latino immigrants — some living on Long Island for decades, others for a couple of years — who said they’ve been going out less since immigration enforcement increased last winter. They’ve started doing their shopping in more affluent neighborhoods and driving through sleepier side streets to avoid major traffic intersections where they could be stopped.

A 43-year-old Nesconset woman, who came to Long Island in 2005, said she applied for a driver’s license shortly after the 2019 law was enacted. It took her three times before she passed the driver’s test.

On a recent afternoon, she met a reporter outside of her high ranch home, adorned with multicolor mums. The Salvadoran woman, who requested that her name not be published out of fear of deportation, got into a slate-colored SUV adorned with a bumper sticker for domestic violence awareness and spoke as she drove.

She’s had other cars before, but this is her first new model, which she drives every day to and from her various jobs, one at a big box store nearby.

"Having a car is very important. I don’t have it as a luxury, but because I need it for my job," she said in Spanish.

The mom of three U.S. citizen children applied for a U-Visa in 2022, a designation by federal immigration officials for victims of certain crimes who assist law enforcement. She said she was eligible because she’s a victim of domestic violence. The process to get a U-Visa takes several years, but a recipient can eventually apply for a green card.

Last year, the woman received a Social Security number and work authorization, making her eligible for jobs beyond those paying under the table.

She’s also working as a home care aide as she studies to get her GED, so she can go to school to become a nursing assistant.

Still, ICE is often top of mind. 

"We don't go out like we used to. We've stopped going out because we used to take trips with my daughters all the time," she said in Spanish. "We stopped going out to eat at restaurants because we were very afraid."

Her 10- and 13-year-old daughters tell her not to worry, but the Nesconset woman notices their anxiety on her behalf. She has advised her three kids, including a 19-year-old son, to never open the door to anyone and, if ICE visits, to ask to see a signed judicial warrant.

"They didn’t like me going to pick them up or taking them to school because of what was happening and stories about ICE agents at schools," she added.

The woman asked a family member to be the standby guardian for her daughters in case she was detained or deported. She even got a notarized letter agreeing to let the family member temporarily care for the girls and to ultimately send them to El Salvador to be with her if she was deported.

But being prepared hasn’t lessened her stress, and the woman said she’s now dealing with arrhythmia and asthma.

"You can't go out when things are like this. ... So we have to stay home," she said. "We're always living with that fear."

Cooperation banned

The immigration enforcement operations across Nassau, Suffolk and neighboring New York City are also having a downstream effect on how Latinos view and interact with law enforcement, experts said.

New York State recently outlawed agreements that allowed local governments to assist in federal civil immigration enforcement. A recent poll found that Long Island voters narrowly oppose the ban.

While Suffolk had no formal agreement with federal immigration enforcement, Nassau ended its partnership with ICE in late August. Both the Nassau County police and sheriff’s department had agreements with ICE that deputized some detectives to assist with enforcement efforts and allowed thousands of immigrants to be detained in an East Meadow jail.

The new law does not bar local law enforcement from working with ICE on criminal matters, but the agency spokesperson said, "If New Yorkers want to reduce the number of vehicle stops ICE officers are forced to make, they should pressure their political leaders to allow New York law enforcement organizations to honor ICE detainers." 

Joaquín Alfredo-Angel Rubalcaba, a professor in the Department of Public Policy at UNC Chapel Hill who studied whether partnership agreements between local police and ICE lead to racial profiling, said the agreements chip away at trust.

"The evidence on this is converging to a very clear interpretation that when the local governments or local enforcement agencies cooperate with ICE in a way that is harmful to the community, that it actually erodes their ability to combat crime."

Espada, the U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, said she’s "more careful" when driving to places such as the schools in Brentwood that she helps with arts and theater production.

"I’m now looking around and if there’s police nearby, I try not to get close," she said, switching between Spanish and English. "I don’t feel safe anymore ... and there’s more awareness. Your senses are more alive."

The Salvadoran woman, meanwhile, is similarly cautious while she drives around her neighborhood, given the high stakes. She keeps both her hands on the steering wheel and drives just under the speed limit at all times, letting other cars pass even though she has the right of way.

"You always have to drive carefully," she said. "That’s the most important thing — obeying the lane markings and all those things."