One-quarter of students in the Greenport school district stayed out of school yesterday as reports of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and arrests swept through the community, creating fear, chaos and anger, according to officials and advocates.

Three longtime area residents with no criminal records reportedly since their arrival in the U.S. were arrested by federal agents as part of President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign, Latino community leaders said. They identified them as Alexandro Rivera Magaña, Martir Zambrano Diaz and Hugo Leonel Ardon Osorio.

Bart Jones and Randee Daddona report in NEWSDAY that the ICE enforcement action, one of the most visible on the East End in months, stirred panic and frustration across Greenport Village as advocates called it a troubling escalation after weeks of anti-ICE demonstrations across Suffolk County.

Southold Town Police Chief Steve Grattan confirmed ICE was in Greenport on Wednesday but said he had not received information from the agency about arrests. Greenport Superintendent of Schools Beth Doyle said many families kept their children home, most likely out of fear of the agents’ presence. The district decided to keep all students on campus throughout the day and not allow seventh through 12th graders to leave for lunch as they typically can, she said.

Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi denounced the raids. "It's a tragedy to see parents being separated from children, and then doubly troubling to see all the fear with local students and families as federal agents were swarming the village this morning," he said.

Residents described early morning scenes of chaos as agents barreled down village streets in pursuit of migrants. Some residents came out blowing whistles, filming the agents and telling them to get out of the community.

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Some bus stops in Nassau and Suffolk counties remain buried in snow and inaccessible to riders nearly two weeks after a major storm hit Long Island.

Nicholas Spangler reports in NEWSDAY that Long Island’s bus passengers are far outnumbered by its rail passengers, who make the Long Island Rail Road the busiest commuter railroad on the continent, but they still total in the tens of thousands each weekday.

Some of them now face streetside shelters that are filled with snow or offer limited or no access to the street because of snow or ice…including several bus stops here on the east end where riders have been seen standing dangerously in the road while awaiting the S-92 Greenport to East Hampton bus. Meteorologists say temperatures warm enough to melt the snow and ice won't come until next Wednesday at the earliest.

Suffolk County spokesperson Michael Martino said for 2,224 bus stops, "crews continue to clear snow from bus stops across the county. If there is a location that needs to be addressed, residents are asked to call the county’s 311 line to report the issue."

But responsibility is complicated for the 302 stops with shelters. Of those, 136 are owned by Suffolk County, 95 by advertisers contracted by the towns where they are located, 19 by the New York State Department of Transportation and 51 by private companies. They, not the county, are responsible for clearing the snow from their shelters, Martino said.

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The Town of Southampton Youth Bureau is offering teens a chance to gain valuable skills and confidence through The Babysitters Club, a free program designed to help participants become responsible, capable, and professional babysitters.

Running on Thursdays from February 26 through April 2, from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Hampton Bays Community Center, the program is open to youth ages 14 to 18. Space is limited to 20 participants, so early registration is encouraged.

Throughout the six-week program, teens will learn essential child safety practices, explore the stages of child...

The Town of East Hampton plans to hike landing fees at its airport in Wainscott by 15% to generate revenue to repair and replace aging infrastructure at the facility. Alek Lewis reports in NEWSDAY that the town also wants to hike fuel fees at the airport, which are currently 30 cents per gallon, by 2 cents.

The public airport serves a mix of private pilots, charter flights, commercial businesses and seasonal visitors.

The town is increasing fees at a “sweet spot” that lets it pay off the roughly $4.6 million it seeks to borrow for capital improvements, East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said during a work session yesterday. The increases in landing and fuel fees are expected to generate more than $350,000 in additional yearly revenue.

“We're not building VIP rooms or expanding any type of amenity at the airport. Everything that's on this list is critical for airport safety, and I don't think those are negotiable,” Councilwoman Cate Rogers said.

Board members said they agreed to the fee increases and plan to vote on them in March — giving time for aviation industry representatives to weigh in. The rate hikes would take effect on May 1, when flights pick up due to the influx of seasonal visitors.

This year’s big-ticket item is the resurfacing of one of two runways, which is estimated to cost $2.7 million, airport director Jim Brundige told board members. While the town has repaired cracks in the runway over the years, it now “needs to be completely milled out and repaved,” he said.

The town has not raised landing fees since 2016. Fuel prices were last hiked in 2014.

East Hampton-based aviation businesses, many of which have leases at the airport, are exempt from landing fees, but not from the fuel charge, said Katie van Heuven, outside counsel for the town. Last year, 3,033 of the 12,674 landings at the airport were exempt from the fees, according to town data.

East Hampton Town officials said they will revisit the airport’s fees in 2027 and possibly increase them again to finance future projects. The town wants to ensure the airport remains self-sustaining and is not financed by tax revenue, Burke-Gonzalez said. The airport relies on the fees to operate.

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The Riverhead Town Police Department closed out 2025 with a lower number of criminal incidents in December than in November, according to the department’s monthly activity reports presented to the Town Board by Police Chief Ed Frost at the board’s Jan. 22 work session. The reports also include year-end totals and a full-year breakdown of criminal offenses recorded in 2025. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that Chief Frost presented two months of reports at the work session because the November report had not been delivered previously. He told board members the department logged 2,604 total incidents in December, including 106 criminal incidents — “a significant drop from even November,” he said.

He told the board that “simple assault was down” and that shoplifting was down as well, saying the department recorded 24 shoplifting incidents during the month.

Board members praised the trend. Supervisor Jerry Halpin said it was notable to see shoplifting going down even as the Route 58 retail corridor continues to add businesses.

Frost attributed at least part of the month-to-month results to both policing strategy and store policy. He said some stores have internal thresholds and “do not call us if it’s under a certain amount of money,” even though, he said, the department will respond. The chief also described a visible holiday-season deployment in shopping areas: in the weeks before Christmas, he said, the department assigned extra patrol cars to shopping plaza parking lots. Police coordinated with loss control personnel at various stores that wanted to participate. The stores had extra loss control people on site on a...

Mountains of snow have sprung up across Long Island after a major winter storm hit two weekends ago. Municipal and state highway workers made the mounds after moving snow from downtown business districts and highway areas like bridges and ramps. While New York City is using mechanical “hot tubs” to melt some of its snow, common practice on Long Island is to let the snow melt naturally – even if it takes weeks.

For example, piles of snow stand in the Hampton Bays fire department parking lot nine days after a foot fell on the east end. Nicholas Spangler and Nicholas Grasso report in NEWSDAY that there are more mountains alongside some state highways, where about 380 highway maintenance workers used loaders and dump trucks to haul "tons" of snow from shoulders, bridges and ramps, according to Stephen Canzoneri, a state Department of Transportation spokesman.

There are mountains in Southold, where crews removed a few hundreds truckloads of snow from Love Lane in Mattituck and Main Road in Cutchogue "just to get passable sidewalks and on-street parking reestablished" Highway Superintendent Dan Goodwin said. The mounds went up at Strawberry Fields fair grounds in Mattituck and on Highway Department land in Peconic.

In East Hampton, the mountains occupy parking lots that will be used in warmer months by surfers and swimmers at Atlantic Avenue and Ditch Plains beaches. Stephen Lynch, East Hampton’s highway superintendent, said town workers will use road sweepers to clear snow treatments or gravel after the snow melts.

In Southampton, aside from the piles at Hampton Bays depot, most snow is simply pushed into the 10- or 15-foot strip of right of way on each side of the road, Highway Superintendent Charles McArdle said. Eventually, as in East Hampton, workers will use street sweepers to clean whatever sediment they can collect from the melted snow, the key word being melted.

"That’ll be when?" McArdle said. "July?"

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U.S. Congressman Nick LaLota…the Republican from Amityville who represents the east end in the U.S. House of Representatives…has announced a pair of initiatives that will see a total of $440 million in federal investments make their way to Suffolk County to support clean water, coastal resilience and public safety.

Jack Motz reports on 27east.com that the first initiative is $429 million for research institutions, strengthening coastal protection and water-quality programs, and expanding support for law enforcement and public safety. After Congress passed three appropriations bills on January 8, President Donald Trump signed the funding package into law on January 23.

Meanwhile, the second, also signed into law on January 23, will provide more than $11 million for 10 community projects throughout the 1st Congressional District, including $782,100 for upgrades to the technology in the Southampton Town Police Department mobile command center. This will see the Southampton Town Police Department’s 23-year-old mobile command unit be modernized with dual-band radios, computers, cameras, dispatch equipment and monitors.

“The money is focused on public safety; it's focused on infrastructure; it's focused on water quality, all three of which are important to my constituents and me,” LaLota told The Express News Group.

Included in the measures is $40 million for the National Estuary Program — of which the Peconic Estuary Partnership is a part — which will go toward water quality preservation.

Another $40 million will ensure critical dredging projects remain in place across the East Coast, like the one that has been ongoing for the past two months or so at Lake Montauk.

Congressman LaLota also highlighted the $155 million that will go toward Brookhaven National Laboratory.

***

A federal judge has allowed offshore work to resume at Sunrise Wind’s offshore wind farm about 30 miles off the coast of

Abandoned office buildings at Grumman Aerospace's former Calverton plant could be redeveloped into an indoor cannabis cultivation facility, but the Central Pine Barrens Commission must first give approvals. Tara Smith reports in NEWSDAY that the 20-acre property on the south side of Grumman Boulevard includes three buildings that were built between 1960 and 1988. They have been vacant since Grumman closed the facility, where the U.S. Navy once assembled and tested fighter jets, in 1996.

Signature Partners, a Manhattan commercial real estate firm, is the site's new owner. Fenced in by barbed wire, the campus of former office buildings recently sold for $750,000, according to a deed filed with the Suffolk County Clerk's office in early January. The property was previously owned by TJ Enterprises LLC.

Signature officials outlined preliminary plans to redevelop the property as an indoor cannabis grow facility during a meeting of the Central Pine Barrens Commission Jan. 21 meeting. The company needs a hardship waiver because the property is in the Central Pine Barrens Core Preservation Area and is considered new development, officials said.

Development is not typically allowed in the environmentally sensitive area so as to protect the environment and groundwater, according to the commission's land use plan.

In a Jan. 7 letter to the Pine Barrens Commission, the developers said a hardship waiver was unnecessary. The applicant seeks an “adaptive reuse” of existing buildings, rather than an entirely new development, the letter said.

“We are not going to change the envelope of any of the buildings,” Signature Partners' CEO, Andrew M. Weiss Jr., said at the meeting. “It’s a restoration type of project.”

Under the proposal, the existing buildings would be reused for cannabis cultivation following interior renovations, parking lot resurfacing, landscaping upgrades and improvements to septic systems, fire sprinklers and other utility connections, according to documents filed with the commission. Ten wooded acres would remain untouched, according to a concept presented to the commission. “We will do nothing to injure or impair the existing majestic pine trees,” the letter states.

The property is in Riverhead Town’s “Natural Resources Protection” zoning district, which allows agricultural production. Cannabis is considered an agricultural crop under state law.

Town site plan approval would also be required, though no official plans have been filed yet.

“At this early stage, we are focused on making our application to the Central Pine Barrens Board. Once that is complete, we look forward to working with the Town of Riverhead to ensure that this long abandoned property is restored and can once again become a significant employer and taxpayer,” Weiss said in a statement.

Weiss added that they plan to make a formal application to the Central Pine Barrens Commission for a hardship waiver. A public hearing would be held before the commission decides.

***

New York's gubernatorial front-runners, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, are using well-known political figures as proxies to attack each other, with Hochul linking Blakeman to President Donald Trump and Blakeman associating Hochul with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Yancey Roy reports in NEWSDAY that this strategy looks to leverage the high negativity ratings of these proxies outside their own parties to energize voter bases, despite the risk that voters may not connect the intended dots. Analysts suggest that while using a bogeyman can be effective, it often results in low-information voting, ultimately disadvantaging voters.

"Gov. Hochul blasted Bruce Blakeman for putting his loyalty to Donald Trump ahead of New Yorkers" begins a recent Hochul campaign release.

"Donald Trump saying [Blakeman is] 100% MAGA. Pretty much the kiss of death...

New York and a dozen other Democrat-led states are part of a federal funding review ordered by the White House’s budget office, as President Donald Trump vows to block the flow of funds to states as early as Sunday that do not fully cooperate with his immigration crackdown.

Laura Figueroa Hernandez reports in NEWSDAY that the Office of Management and Budget, in a memo sent to federal departments last week, ordered agency leaders to provide a detailed listing of all federal grants and funds given to 14 Democratic states and Washington, D.C.

“This information will be used to better understand the scope of funding in certain states and localities in order to facilitate efforts to reduce the improper and fraudulent use of those funds through administrative means or legislative proposals to Congress,” reads the Jan. 20 memo obtained by Newsday, first reported by Real Clear Politics.

Only the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs were exempt from the request, according to the three-page memo.

The sweeping review comes after President Trump in a Jan. 13 speech to the Detroit Economic Club said his administration planned to stop “making any payments to sanctuary cities or states having sanctuary cities” starting Feb. 1.

Trump has already moved to freeze funding for other New York projects and programs, including $3.4 billion for child care and social services programs and the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel Project, which project leaders have warned will stop construction of the massive Hudson River rail tunnel starting Feb. 6 if funds are not released.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has said the state will sue the Trump administration if it blocks additional funding over New York's immigration policies.

The administration has taken aim at the state’s 2019 Green Light Law, which allows individuals to apply for a driver’s license regardless of citizenship status. The law also requires the state Department of Motor Vehicles to notify the license holder "when immigration enforcement agencies request" their information.

“This is just a threat to intimidate states like New York into bowing into submission, and that is something we'll never do," Hochul told reporters in Albany on Jan. 15. "So I say this: You touch any more money from the State of New York, we'll see you in court."

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On the East Hampton Town Police Department’s wish list this year are automatic translators that would be used during traffic stops to facilitate communication with Spanish-speaking drivers and passengers.

Jack Motz reports on 27east.com that first presented at the Town Board work session on January 20, the translator devices would cost $115,000 in the capital budget and would come from a company called Axon, which has a contract with Town Police for the currently used body cameras. Axon first rolled out the new technology about two years ago, but it wasn’t available to East Hampton Town Police until now.

Currently, when translation is needed during a traffic stop, the responding officer calls in a Spanish-speaking officer to assist or uses a department cellphone, donated by Organización Latino Americana, to call a “language line” service, which provides translation for Spanish and a host of other languages.

The Axon translators are “push to talk,” meaning the officer would hold down a button and the machine, which attaches to a body camera, would provide real-time translation between the officer and the person who had been stopped.

“This will allow immediate real-time translation services in any situation that our officers encounter, without having to bring down another officer to translate, without having to sit down with the language line,” said East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo. “Tremendous new technology... a really positive thing for the community and for our officers.”

East Hampton Town Police have been working with...

Long Islanders cleared their sidewalks of ice and snow this week, obliged by neighborly custom and, sometimes, the law.

Like much else in this land of 13 towns and two cities, the relevant details — residential or commercial property, size of fine, extent of grace and enforcement — depend on the jurisdiction. Most, but not all communities have laws on the books about a property owner or occupant’s obligation to clear "obstruction by snow or ice and icy conditions."

Many municipal officials said they issue warnings before tickets and that the laws exist to keep sidewalks safe, not raise revenue.

Nicholas Spangler reports in NEWSDAY that some towns also have laws on the books that let them simply do the snow and ice removal themselves, billing the property owner for "direct and indirect costs of repairing, removing and/or remedying the condition," as Huntington code puts it. To ensure payment, the town places a lien against the property and collects "in the same manner as real property taxes."

In Southampton, no law is needed because, at least for now, Highway Department workers do the job, funded by the $300 to $500 most property owners pay annually in highway taxes, Highway Superintendent Charles McArdle said. But significant sidewalk expansion over the last several years has increased the snow clearance workload for highway workers so much that the practice will likely have to end, McArdle said.

"Everyone thinks they pay taxes and should have every bit of service done, but there’s a point where we wouldn’t be able to manage," he said.

Southampton Town leaders are expected this spring to take up new rules putting the responsibility on property owners, perhaps modeling the legislation on Brookhaven’s, McArdle said.

Finally: if, in the course of snow clearing, a Long Islander is tempted to throw the stuff into the street, they should not. It makes extra work for plow crews, it's explicitly prohibited in many municipal codes, and their neighbors may give them more than just nasty looks if such a move should result in personal injury.

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Early discussions have been held between Southampton Village, the Southampton Fire District and the Southampton Fire Department about potentially building a new firehouse to serve the village. Dan Stark reports on 27east.com that the talks — which according to Trustee Roy Stevenson, the village’s liaison to the fire department, have been happening for a few months — have centered on a piece of property on North Sea Road off County Road 39 that is owned by the fire district. Stevenson said that since many of the volunteer firefighters live north of County Road 39, it is difficult for them to get to the village’s three firehouses — located on Windmill Lane, Hampton Road and St. Andrews Road, all south of County Road 39 — during the summer due to traffic congestion.

David Price, the chairman of the district Board of Fire Commissioners said that a new firehouse would lead to better coverage and make it easier for firefighters to get to the station, as well as to house larger vehicles that the older Windmill Lane station cannot accommodate.

Stevenson also noted that the Windmill Lane firehouse’s location in a floodplain “is not an ideal place to have a firehouse when you need to get it and you have an emergency” like a flood or hurricane.

Stevenson said that he estimates that “anything that we decide now probably isn’t going to even happen for four or five years,” though he noted that the village is continuing to pursue the idea as the population grows.

If the new firehouse is eventually built, Price floated the idea of turning the historic Windmill Lane firehouse into a museum featuring old firetrucks that the village owns.

“We have these beautiful antiques that no one gets to see except on the Fourth of July,” he said. “If they could be put in a house right there where they...

The Southampton Town Board yesterday approved the $25.8 million purchase of an oceanfront mansion, which the town plans to demolish to create a beach access point.

The three-story, 11-bedroom home at 1950 Meadow Lane — a stretch of multimillion-dollar oceanfront estates in the Village of Southampton — will be acquired by the town, razed and ultimately replaced with a small public parking lot, officials said.

Alek Lewis reports in NEWSDAY that Southampton Town officials have framed the purchase as a rare opportunity to secure prime beachfront land for passive recreational use and protect the area's maritime dune habitat. The removal of the home and its pool meets the state's goal of moving people and structures away from the shoreline, which are at risk of flooding during an extreme storm, said Jacqueline Fenlon, the director of the town's Community Preservation Fund, during a hearing earlier this month.

The unanimous vote by the board authorizes Southampton Supervisor Maria Moore to sign the town’s contract with the seller, Frances Katz, to buy the 2.2-acre property.

"It's going to be used for generations," Councilman Bill Pell told Newsday. He called the purchase a "good investment" and said the town is pursuing more waterfront properties for acquisition.

Some town residents have said they were elated at the prospect of expanded beach access in Southampton Village. Town residents who live outside of the village are subject to high beach fees.

Supervisor Moore told NEWSDAY most town beaches are west of the Shinnecock Canal, Southampton Town's geographic midpoint. Residents who live further east will now have a closer beach to enjoy.

Money for the purchase comes from the Community Preservation Fund, which generates revenue for land preservation and water quality projects through a 2% real estate tax. The fund can be used to purchase properties for a variety of reasons, including open-space and parkland preservation.

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North Fork residents came to the Southold Town Board’s meeting last night urging the board to make a strong public statement of their support for the local immigrant community and their grave concern about federal immigration enforcement actions here and around the country. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that they brought with them a petition signed by 800 residents, which many said they’d continue to carry. The crowd was unimpressed with a statement read by Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski, who said it was drafted during a lengthy discussion with the town’s police chief about public safety earlier Tuesday.

Supervisor Krupski’s statement discussed the town police department’s commitment to fair enforcement of the law, “treating all individuals with dignity” and ensuring that everyone in town feels comfortable interacting with town police.

“We pledge to work proactively to ensure all community members, regardless of background or immigration status, feel safe calling 911, participating in school, shopping for needs and accessing health care without fear,” said the supervisor, adding that the Town of Southold plans to follow up on a letter it sent to federal immigration officials in early December “expressing concerns about public safety with immigration enforcement.”

Though immigration enforcement has been quiet out on the North Fork in recent months after two reported raids in Greenport last summer, ICE agents have been deployed to Riverhead, Riverside, Hampton Bays and Westhampton Beach in recent months.

***

The Eddie Westfall Arena - the ice rink at Veterans Memorial Park in Calverton - is closed while the operator works to remove ice and snow from portions of the dome and its perimeter.

Rink staff are working to reopen the facility as soon as possible, Peconic Ice Rinks said in a social media post yesterday.

Denise Civiletti reports on...

In Montauk all public school classes move to remote learning today otherwise most east end school districts have implemented a two hour delayed start.

Meanwhile, Nicholas Grasso reports in NEWSDAY that tomorrow marks 40 years since the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing high school teacher Christa McAuliffe and the six astronauts aboard. McAuliffe had been selected for a trip on the Challenger from a pool of more than 11,000 teachers who had applied for NASA's inaugural Teacher in Space Project. Grade school students on Long Island and nationwide took special interest in the flight, since McAuliffe was planning to give lessons from space…and witnessed the explosion as it happened.

While the makeup of the crew appeared extraordinary, NASA missions themselves felt quite ordinary by the mid '80s. With the Space Shuttle program's record of success, it seemed safe to welcome aboard McAuliffe, selected from the more than 11,000 teachers who vied for her seat.

"The shuttle was being billed as a routine then," Joshua Stoff, the curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, told Newsday. "They were talking about sending kids into space." While children looked up to the astronauts aboard the Challenger, many Long Islanders felt proud of the machine itself, having built several of its essential components, according to Stoff. Long Island’s deep aviation history — from airfields developed after the turn of the century, to the manufacturing of World War II bombers and even the creation of the lunar module that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon — thrived inside Fairchild Republic and Grumman manufacturing facilities in Farmingdale and Bethpage, according to Stoff.

But NASA had never launched a space shuttle with the temperature as cold as it was at liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986 — 36 degrees, about 15 degrees colder than any previous launch, according to the official commission report. Investigators determined the bitter cold weakened the O-ring seals in the ship's right solid rocket booster, causing the shuttle to rupture. The disaster grounded the Space Shuttle program for more than 2½ years.

"It was almost like the Titanic, ‘the ship is unsinkable, full speed ahead’ kind of thing," Stoff said. "[NASA was] just complacent and didn’t pay attention to a lot of engineers who said it was not safe to launch that day."

***

On Sunday afternoon as a foot of snow was accumulating across the south fork two houses caught fire on Noyac Avenue in the Pine Neck neighborhood of Noyac knocking out power for 28 houses in the vicinity amid the ongoing winter storm.

Cailin Riley reports on 27east.com that the fire damaged a pole in the area, per PSEG spokesperson Elizabeth Flagler; PSEG crews had to deenergize the area to make it safe for the firefighters to enter and crews to begin repairs. The pole will be replaced, and PSEG workers were on site attempting to complete repairs as quickly as possible. Power was fully restored to the area by 2:41 a.m. on Sunday, January 26.

The Sag Harbor Volunteer Fire Department was called to the fire at 187 Noyac Avenue at 3:13 p.m., where a fire had started in the garage of one of the cottages clustered in that area. No one was injured, but several residents who were home at the time were displaced, at the peak of the winter storm that had descended on the area and dropped nearly 12 inches of snow. The Red Cross was involved in the effort to help those displaced residents, Sag Harbor Fire Chief Mike Guyer said.

The fire occurred in a cluster of cottages situated on a long driveway off Noyac Avenue that leads down to the bay.

The Sag Harbor Fire Department called in the RIT team from East Hampton and also requested mutual aid from the North Sea Fire Department, which sent an engine. The Bridgehampton Fire Department headed to the Sag Harbor firehouse to be on...