As the Greenport mayor says,

“The whole gang issue is something to keep the white majority scared about the Latino population, and to come in and bust as many people as they want.”

The warrantless home arrests have been used with increasing frequency since 2005.

By law, immigration agents without judicial warrants may enter homes only with the consent of the residents. They may not use racial or ethnic profiling to single people out. But they have broad authority to detain anyone they encounter if they have grounds for suspicion that the person is not in the country legally. The legality of recent home raids has been challenged in federal court in New York and elsewhere.

....For decades, such raids were rare, in part because the idea of home as an inviolable space has been enshrined by the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. “We are now in the midst of a major resurgence” in home raids, Professor Kanstroom said.

It wasn't easy for the employers to track down their valued employees. Take for example Marvin Lopez who has worked as a vegetable packer for Satur Farms, which is owned by former Lutece executive chef Eberhard Müller and his wife:

For the first six to eight