Despite President Trump’s endless fear mongering about the dangers of undocumented immigrants, his company often failed to check the immigration status of its own employees. Earlier this month, the Trump Organization fired a dozen undocumented workers from the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, NY. Many of the employees had spent years on the Trump Organization’s pay roll before they were fired without warning during the government shutdown over Trump’s border wall.
One such worker, Victorina Morales, who was born in Guatemala, will get a chance to make a statement about the cruelty and unfairness of the immigration system under Trump. Morales will attend the State of the Union next Tuesday as a guest of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, according to the Washington Post.
Morales was fired by the Trump Organization in December after she was featured in a New York Times article and disclosed her undocumented status. She and other workers have alleged illegal activity on the part of the company.
From the Post:
This week, Morales joined three other workers on Capitol Hill to petition members of Congress for protection and highlight what their lawyer and some Democratic lawmakers described as potential lawbreaking by the Trump Organization. Two of the four workers said the company provided them with or helped them obtain false documents to justify their employment, a claim that Eric Trump denied.
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is now gathering signatures for a letter calling on the FBI to launch an investigation. He met with the group Monday.
“The number of immigrants claiming they were employed illegally by the Trump Organization has risen to more than 20 individuals and raises serious questions of criminal activity and numerous violations of employment laws at the Trump Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, and Bedminster, New Jersey — including conspiracy charges, procuring false documents, and forced and coerced labor,” the letter states.
The Trump Organization is currently under the management of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who took over when their father became president.
The report of the firings by the Post is heartbreaking. Some of the employees who were fired had worked at their jobs for more than a dozen years. The workers were not given any warning before their firings, and weren’t provided severance.
“I started to cry,” Gabriel Sedano, a Trump Organization maintenance worker from Mexico who worked at the golf club since 2005, told the Post. “I told them they needed to consider us. I had worked almost 15 years for them in this club, and I’d given the best of myself to this job.”
“I’d never done anything wrong, only work and work,” he added. “They said they didn’t have any comments to make.”
“They said absolutely nothing. They never said, ‘Your Social Security number is bad’ or ‘Something is wrong,’ ” Margarita Cruz, a former housekeeping employee from Mexico who worked at the club for eight years, told the Post. “Nothing. Nothing. Until right now.”