Farmingville

Midway between the multiethnic melting pot of New York City and the predominantly white and wealthy Hamptons lies Farmingville, a historically quiet, middle-class suburb that became the unlikely flash point in the heated debate over immigration. Far from the U.S.-Mexican border as the town is, Farmingville is now one stop on an underground railroad of sorts that carries unemployed — and undocumented — men and women from their Mexican homes to destinations as remote as Long Island's hinterlands. Once settled in often criminally overcrowded residences, many of these undocumented aliens gather each morning on street corners around town in hopes that landscaper...