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Housing issue gets heated
Levy slams media over coverage of immigrant crackdown and defends shuttering jam-packed residences

BY BART JONES
STAFF WRITER
July 12, 2005

An angry Suffolk Executive Steve Levy yesterday lashed out at the news media, including Newsday, for its coverage of the Mexican day laborer evictions in Farmingville and said they are missing the real story - the many residents who support the crackdown on illegally overcrowded houses.

Flanked at a news conference by about 10 sympathetic residents and Joseph Caracappa, the Suffolk Legislature's presiding officer, Levy pointed to a posterboard of Newsday stories and exchanged heated words with some reporters as he accused the media of focusing too heavily on ousted tenants. He disputed accounts that some had been left homeless.

Caracappa, a Republican, said the media "should be ashamed of yourselves."

Levy, a Democrat, said residents of Farmingville "cheered" the housing crackdown that started June 19, but their happiness "changed to dismay when they saw in the media the focus of the attention ... This is not an issue about race or immigration or long-term housing. It's an issue about the integrity of neighborhoods."

During one heated exchange, reporter Mike Xirinachs of WCBS-880 AM suggested the issue did involve race and asked Levy if he could provide the name of one white immigrant evicted by authorities in Suffolk. "Unbelievable," Levy replied to Xirinachs' comments. Caracappa defended Levy. "Newsday, wrong. News 12, wrong. New York Times, wrong. And every other media outlet that's here that has criticized this man for standing up for me and others, absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong," Caracappa said.

"All you seem to care about is who is buying your newspaper and who's subscribing to your TV channel or Cablevision. For you, it's all about money and you should be ashamed of yourselves," he said.

He also said he doubted the media would cover the story if officials shut down a fraternity house near Stony Brook University because "it's not sensational news and you're not pulling the race card."

"Now you are getting insulting," Xirinachs shot back.

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."

"Now our American dream is a nightmare," said Diane Aragones, noting that 10 to 15 day laborers gather in front of her house every day. "It hurts me so deeply that people say this is a racist thing. Hello. Look at us," she said, noting that her husband Dave is of Puerto Rican descent.

Interviewed afterward, immigrant advocates responded to Levy by saying they are not opposed to enforcing housing codes, but that tossing workers onto the streets was simply creating another problem. Three houses containing as many as 104 men have been shut by authorities or landlords, and advocates say some of the men were left homeless. Levy said that is false, saying county workers had gone to Farmingville and found no one left homeless.

More than a week after the crackdown began, Newsday reported that a half dozen laborers were living in the woods in the Farmingville area. They said in interviews they could not find shelter and had no other place to live. It was not clear last night whether they have found shelter since.

Levy is "missing the real sentiments of Long Islanders," said Patrick Young of the Long Island Immigrant Alliance, who has called Levy "public enemy No. 1" in the Latino community and whom Levy has labeled part of a "lunatic fringe." The Latino community "has to be dealt with respectfully and cannot simply be rousted out of their houses and thrown out onto the streets."