One afternoon, despite his precautions, Gómez was stopped for a traffic infraction and ticketed for driving without a license. In El Salvador, he would have been forfeiting a steady chunk of his paychecks to gangsters demanding renta. On Long Island, the money went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, by way of the local police. Over the course of 2017, Gómez spent about a thousand dollars on tickets. He would pay them on days when it was raining, so that he didn’t miss landscaping work.
