Victorina Morales was fired by the Trump Organization after publicly revealing that she had been working for Donald Trump’s company while living in the United States as an undocumented immigrant, and now the Guatemala native will get a trip to the State of the Union address to see Trump in person.
Morales made headlines after disclosing her immigration status while working on the staff at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. As the Washington Post reported, her story prompted a string of reports about how the Trump Organization allegedly did not conduct the proper background checks to ensure that employees were living in the United States legally, leading to criticism of Trump for profiting off of the work of illegal immigrants while portraying himself as tough on immigration.
Victorina Morales got an invite to Trump’s State of the Union address from New Jersey Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman, seen as an attempt by Democrats to highlight what they see as hypocrisy from Trump on his immigration stance.
Morales first spoke out to the New York Times in a story last year called “Making President Trump’s Bed: A Housekeeper Without Papers,” leading to a subsequent report from the Washington Post that found the Trump Organization quietly fired a dozen undocumented workers from the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, during the government shutdown.
The reports were seen as a major blow to Trump as he was making a pitch for the need for a border wall to protect against illegal immigration. Critics have said that a greater focus should be on companies that knowingly employ illegal immigrants to benefit from their cheap labor, putting the Trump Organization in the crosshairs.
Victorina Morales, an undocumented worker who was fired from Trump’s Bedminster golf club after she publicly disclosed her immigration status, will attend Trump’s State of the Union address next week as a guest of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a NJ Democrat. https://t.co/KMBwmEr6BE
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 30, 2019
Morales and a group of three other Trump Organization employees spoke out to Congress this week about potentially illegal practices by the company, noting that Trump Organization employees helped them to obtain false documents that allowed them to work there.
Donald Trump’s State of the Union will come amid a brief break in what was a record-setting government shutdown. Trump ultimately backed down from his demand not to re-open the government without border wall funding, signing a measure that re-opened the government for three weeks as negotiations continued. But Democrats have not backed down from their stance to not offer any funding for the wall, saying it is an ineffective way to address border security and reminding Trump that he repeatedly promised he would make Mexico pay for the wall.
