Free Republic

About 20 Mexican immigrants set up a "tent city" Thursday next to a Farmingville house shuttered by Brookhaven Town officials because it was overcrowded, and an activist gave them supplies for a sign calling their community "Levyville," in reference to Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy. The tenants of 196 Berkshire Dr., most of them day laborers but including four youngsters ages 10 to 17, said they spent Wednesday night sleeping in four tents on the property or on a concrete slab next to the house. A Latino activist, the Rev. Allan Ramirez, gave the immigrants sheets and spray paint for...

Brookhaven Town officials Wednesday ordered shut a seventh illegally overcrowded house in Farmingville in a crackdown that is provoking cheers from many residents who complain their neighborhoods are being destroyed but worries among immigrant advocates that the tenants have no place to go. The two-story house at 196 Berkshire Dr. was home to between 14 and 42 people and had various code violations, including exposed electrical wires, blocked doors, litter and no smoke detectors, said Inez Birbiglia, a Brookhaven Town spokeswoman. Authorities identified the owner as Maria Rosa Esteves, who could not be reached for comment. Esteves lives in Selden,...

FARMINGVILLE, N.Y. (AP) - This middle-class Long Island community an hour from New York City and 2,000 miles from the Mexican border has become an unlikely flashpoint in the national debate over illegal immigration, with Hispanics beaten, harassed and evicted in recent weeks. For more than a decade, immigrants from Mexico or Central America have been drawn to Long Island by the prospect of jobs. Many stand on street corners in Farmingville, waiting for contractors, landscapers and others to offer them a day's work at about $10 an hour. Then at night they go back to their illegally overcrowded single-family...

Brookhaven town officials Friday launched another volley in their ongoing war on illegal housing, ordering the closing of three residences they said housed as many as 90 tenants. In documents filed in State Supreme Court in Riverhead, the town alleged that the conditions in the houses, all zoned for single-family -- one in Ronkonkoma and two in Farmingville -- were filthy and overcrowded, with fire hazards such as exposed wiring and blocked exits. The homeowners each face possible $10,000 fines for violations of town codes, officials said. Two of the homeowners could not be reached for comment, but one said...

Tensions in Farmingville over immigration flared up yesterday as Suffolk police arrested five men and one teenage girl in two seperate incidents at a busy day laborer hiring site.In the first, classified by detectives as a hate crime, two Holtsville men threw a bottle at a day laborer, Suffolk police said. Three hours later, a heated confrontation erupted at the same location between about 20 supporters of day laborers and one resident opposed to illegal immigration.At 6 a.m., Matthew Lindstadt, 20, and James Stern, 32, lured a laborer with the promise of work to their pickup truck parked near the...

An angry Suffolk Executive Steve Levy lashed out at the news media Monday, including Newsday, for its coverage of the Mexican day laborer evictions in Farmingville and said it is missing the real story -- the many residents who support the crackdown on illegally overcrowded houses. The residents praised the crackdown by Brookhaven Town and Suffolk County officials, saying houses packed with Mexican immigrants were turning parts of Farmingville into "slums."

Luis' new home is a patch of woods in Brookhaven. He uses local businesses for his bathroom and each day hopes to find something to sleep on.Until recently, the day laborer - who was afraid to give his full name - and a dozen others had been living together in the same overcrowded house in Farmingville, paying $200 to $250 a month to live three to a room.They said they were evicted on a half-hour's notice at 10:30 p.m. because their landlord didn't want to get arrested the way landlord Rosalina Dias had a week earlier after a raid on...

Waving signs and banging sticks on plastic buckets like drums, about 200 people, mainly undocumented Mexican immigrants, marched through Farmingville yesterday demanding the right not to be evicted without notice and thrown into the street.'snip'The immigrants and their supporters, including priest and activists, were protesting the eviction by authorities last week of at least 28 Mexican day laborers from an overcrowded Farmingville house, leaving them homeless.'snip'[Steve] Levy shot back yesterday, saying his campaign is supported by wide swaths of people fed up with overcrowded houses in Farmingville. "The 99 percent of the county that supports the closing of this hellhole...

The man from Mexico City said he came from Farmingville looking for work so he could give his wife and two children a better life back home.Yesterday, he found himself homeless in the land that was supposed to fuel his dream. He was among dozens of Mexican day laborers evicted from 33 Woodmont Place in a crackdown on overcrowded housing by authorities."We're going to sleep in the street," the man, shaken by the eviction and unwilling to give his name, said in Spanish. Another worker, Francisco Penelopez, 27, summed up the immigrants' grim mood when he said, "This isn't the...

A pervert who broke into two Long Island homes and sexually assaulted sleeping women was busted after one victim identified him as a carpenter who had worked on her home, cops said yesterday.Police believe the suspect, Antonio Escobar, 31, is an illegal alien who has been getting day-labor jobs with construction crews.One of the victims managed to fight him off, the other, whose 5-month old baby was in the room, was raped, cops said.'snip'"The victims husband had just left for work,"...."This guy climbed into bed with with her. He threatened to kill her and her small child who was sleeping...

PBS's new documentary 'Farmingville' was broadcast on many PBS stations tonight. It covers a Long Island community's reaction to a sudden influx of illegal immigrants. From PBS's synopsis:The shocking hate-based attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers catapult a small Long Island town into national headlines, unmasking a new front line in the border wars: suburbia. For nearly a year, Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini lived and worked in Farmingville, New York, so they could capture first-hand the stories of residents, day laborers and activists on all sides of the debate. Lou Dobbs calls it "[o]ne of the most important...

<p>DOBBS: Hundreds of thousands of jobs being exported overseas to cheap labor markets and a record high trade deficit causing many Americans to fight back. They are part of what is a growing movement to support companies that keep their goods and services made in America.</p>