Trump Golf Course Fired About A Dozen Undocumented Immigrants During Government Shutdown

During the recently concluded partial government shutdown, several media stories focused on the financial hardship faced by the thousands of federal workers who had been furloughed. But at The Trump National Golf Course in Westchester, New York, another story about employment insecurity was developing as well, this one centering on undocumented immigrant workers. The Washington Post reports that about a dozen of these workers were fired last week and that some of them had worked for the Trump Organization for several years.

“We are making a broad effort to identify any employee who has given false and fraudulent documents to unlawfully gain employment,” said Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons and executive vice-president in the Trump Organization.

“Where identified, any individual will be terminated immediately.”

He went on to add that their employment at the golf course had been an illustration of how “broken” the U.S immigration system is. It’s one of his father’s habitual talking points and one of the justifications he often uses for his proposed border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

This is not the first time that there has been a news story about Trump Org’s use of undocumented immigrant labor.

Earlier this month, the Hill spoke to Anibal Romero, an attorney representing five undocumented women who had worked at the Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey. He said that his clients had informed him there were several other people employed there with the same immigration status.

“A very large number of people who have worked there in the past, and we believe that this time there about 12 or 13 people who are still working there. We haven’t heard from them,” Romero said.

In 2018, the New York Times profiled Victorina Morales, a woman who was hired at the New Jersey golf course in 2013. In the interview, she revealed that she had used fake immigration papers to get her job. She claimed that her managers at Trump National were aware of her undocumented status and helped her to avoid facing penalties for that. But the Times reported that there was no definitive proof that the Trump Org knew there were illegal immigrants in their employ.

But Romero asserted that his clients’ managers were aware that they were undocumented as a process called E-Verify was not used to check the authenticity of their papers. He insisted that they were “brought on to work knowing that they did not have legal status in the United States.”

Approximately a dozen undocumented employees at Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, were fired last week, as lawmakers were in the middle of a partial government shutdown over funding for a border wall, The Washington Post reports https://t.co/z9CAiGYyLu pic.twitter.com/NdaaEPGbZU

— CNN (@CNN) January 27, 2019