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Victorina Morales, the brave undocumented immigrant who stepped forward to reveal that she had been working at Donald Trump’s New Jersey golf club for five years, is standing by her decision to take on the president of the United States at great personal risk. “We need to come out and defend ourselves,” she said. “I had enough with suffering.”
Morales is one of the four immigrants—so far—who have said that the Trump Organization hired them to work at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster while knowing that they didn’t have permission to be in the U.S. Morales, in particular, said she worked in such close proximity to Trump that she made his bed and got a special recognition from the White House. “I liked working for him,” she said.
That all changed when she began to be subjected to abusive behavior from management, saying that immigrant employees were ridiculed as “donkeys,” “dogs,” and insulted over their English-language proficiency. Then, there was the main boss. “When I saw how he talked about us when he started his presidency,” she said about Trump, “I felt humiliated.”
Morales is also exposing (more) claims of criminality within the Trump Organization, saying that management not only knew she had false documents, but helped her procure another set while holding her immigration status over her head. “The brave women who’ve come forward to seek justice,” said leading immigration attorney David Leopold, “are victims of crime” who could be protected by special visas.
But as it stands now, Morales remains vulnerable. She said she can’t go back to Guatemala, where her family has experienced death threats. So she’s fighting to stay here, and by putting herself in the national spotlight in order to defend other vulnerable immigrants like her and expose Trump’s rank immigration hypocrisy, she could not only be on the radar of vindictive immigration officials, but also violent supporters of the president.
Morales, Sandra Diaz, Gilberta Dominguez, and Floridalma Bautista are truly heroes, and have shown more public courage than complicit congressional Republicans who bow to late-night presidential tweets and threats. “Let’s pause to reflect on the courage” that it took for these workers, immigrant rights leader Frank Sharry said, “to come forward to blow the whistle on the most powerful man in the world.”
