2025-03-02
18 分钟Hi, I'm Luis Ferreza Durni, and I cover immigration in New York for the Times.
In early February, I went out to Corona, Queens.
It's the neighborhood with one of the largest populations of Latin Americans in New York City.
It was lunchtime, and I went to this Ecuadorian restaurant.
It's one of those places that should have been pretty much full,
but on that day, it was basically empty.
Fernando, the owner,
told me how he hadn't seen the restaurant and the streets around it so empty
since the days of COVID which was saying a lot
because Corona was one of the hardest hit places in the city.
During the pandemic,
Fernando told me that the prospect of ICE immigration rates was keeping people at home.
And he said that his restaurant had been struggling since Trump took office.
You know, I've been covering immigration in New York for over a year now.
And if you went to Corona on any given day last year,
you would have gotten lost in a crowd at Corona Plaza,
which is the central pedestrian area of the neighborhood.
It would usually be very loud.
Everyone would be speaking Spanish,
and you could hear reggaeton and cumbia over the sound of the subway train.