Report: Trump Happily Employing Undocumented Workers While ICE Rounds Them Up

Demonizing immigrants played a key role in Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency, just as cracking down on “illegal” border crossings and whipping the base into a frenzy over a so-called migrant “invasion” has been a regular feature of his time in office and reelection efforts. But undocumented immigrants have also served another, lesser known but nevertheless vital function in the president’s life: providing cheap labor at his businesses. And not just, like, in years past, or in the first few months of his presidency, but as of—what’s that now?—today. Yes, it’s a tough job to foam at the mouth daily about people entering the country without going through the proper channels first, use it to justify separating families and sending people back to nations they’ve never known—all the while relying on them to keep your golf clubs running—but somebody’s got to do it!

The Washington Post reports that the Trump Organization currently employs a “roving crew of Latin American employees” to perform masonry and maintenance work at his winery and various golf clubs around the country. For almost two decades, the group has been comprised of workers who came into the US illegally—the penalty for which the president seemingly believes should be death—according to two former crew members. Another one, who still works for Trump, told reporters Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold that remains the case today. President Trump “doesn’t want undocumented people in the country,” said Jorge Castro, an Ecuadorian immigrant without legal status who left the company last spring after nine years. “But at his properties, he still has them.” He added: “If you’re a good worker, papers don’t matter.”

Castro said he worked on seven Trump properties, most recently Trump’s golf club in Northern Virginia. He provided The Washington Post with several years of his pay stubs from Trump’s construction company, Mobile Payroll Construction LLC, as well as photos of him and his colleagues on Trump courses and text messages he exchanged with his boss, including one in January dispatching him to “Bedminster,” Trump’s New Jersey golf course.

Another immigrant who worked for the Trump construction crew, Edmundo Morocho, said he was told by a Trump supervisor to buy fake identity documents on a New York street corner. He said he once hid in the woods of a Trump golf course to avoid being seen by visiting labor union officials.

Last January, Eric Trump, who took over the day-to-day business with his brother, Don Jr., said that the Trump Organization was “making a broad effort to identify any employee who has given false and fraudulent documents to unlawfully gain employment,” and that any such individuals would be fired immediately. He also claimed that the company was implementing E-Verify, a program that lets employers check the immigration status of new hires “as soon as possible,” though—and please, find something to brace yourself against lest the shock of what you’re about to hear knock you flat on your back—nothing “changed on the Trump construction crew, according to current and former employees.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/trump-organization-undocumented-workers?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=biz&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=Thematic_Business_08122019&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9f8cb24c17c6adf0e5d24&cndid=25394153&utm_content=Final&utm_term=Thematic_Business