Donald Trump built his campaign, and eventual presidency, on anti-immigrant sentiment. Immigration (and more specifically, limiting undocumented immigrants through border security) is the president’s key issue, one he routinely brings up at rallies to rile up his supporters. Last week, the New York Times published a piece highlighting Victoria Morales, an undocumented immigrant working at Trump’s golf course in New Jersey. For any other president, this would have been a bombshell.
Trump has attempted to ban Muslims from entering the country. He has called for $5 billion to fund a wall along the southern border. He has separated families at the border and placed children in cages; many of those children have yet to be reunited with their parents. Just days after Thanksgiving, families from Central America approaching the U.S.-Mexico border in search of refuge were attacked with tear gas.
Despite Trump’s well-documented disdain for immigrants, particularly immigrants of color, knowledge that he employs undocumented workers within his businesses is not a surprise because, ultimately, he is the one who benefits most from the arrangement. This is despite having made public calls to expand programs like E-verify, an online tool used by some employers to determine an individual’s eligibility for employment. In 2016, during a campaign stop in Arizona, then-candidate Trump touted expanding the E-Verify program.
The New York Times story said Morales has been employed at the Trump National Golf Course since 2013. The E-Verify program has been around since the late 1990s. So, when exactly did Trump become such an advocate for E-Verify? It seems Trump’s views start and stop at his rally speeches because, as of the publication of the Times piece, Morales was still employed at the president’s golf course, more than two years since the campaign stop in Arizona where he indicated support for an expansion of the very program that would have revealed she was undocumented.
What is the benefit of not using the program for someone like Trump? From Morales’ own account, her supervisors held her immigration status against her. Miriam Jordan writes: “the housekeeping supervisor frequently made remarks about the employees’ vulnerable legal status when critiquing their work, Morales said, sometimes calling them ‘stupid illegal immigrants’ with less intelligence than a dog.”
For employers like Trump, employing undocumented workers is about control. He knows full well that, should your workforce demand better pay or treatment, you can threaten to report them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For employees, this threat is about more than just losing a job—it’s about losing an entire way of life. It means being separated from their families or placed in detention for months, if not years. It often means deportation.
There is so much at stake for undocumented workers facing hostile work treatment. Meanwhile, employers like Trump risk nothing.
Trump decides he can break the law as long as the result is something that pleases or personally benefits him. He doesn’t actually care about any of these issues. For all of Trump's chest-pounding and disingenuous politicking, his immigration rhetoric is nothing but a ruse to embolden his base.
Simply stated, Trump lives a double standard. On the one hand, he denounces immigrants and refugees as criminals trying to enter the country to harm Americans. At the same time, he employs and exploits them for his own benefit. But Trump shouldn’t be allowed to just bite the hand that feeds him.
Trump is not alone in benefiting from the exploitation of undocumented workers. A study by The National Employment Law Project found that 37 percent of undocumented immigrants experience wage violations. That same study found that 85 percent of undocumented immigrants experience overtime pay violations, meaning those “who worked over 40 hours a week for a single employer [reported] that they were not paid the legally required time-and-a-half pay rates.”
In Trump’s world (which is devoid of facts), undocumented immigrants are exploiting the American economy and causing harm to the American people. In reality, the millions of undocumented people living and working in this country are often the ones exploited. They not only work, but also pay into programs they’ll never benefit from, such as Social Security and Medicaid, through taxes on their wages. They are victims of a system that talks about change but fails to act in any meaningful way.
Besides DACA, which was a victory for immigrant youth in 2012, there hasn’t been any demonstrative immigration reform in the last 30 years. While Trump is seen as the most recent villain in the fight for a just immigration policy, the need for reform predates him. Democrats and Republicans have talked about the need to overhaul our immigration system, but both have failed to enact policies to do that.
Politicians have gone back and forth with the lives of people like Victoria Morales for decades now. They continue to shift the blame, always waiting until a new congressional session or for a new president, all while holding the lives of undocumented people in limbo. It is unconscionable to demonize undocumented immigrants while simultaneously benefiting from their continued exploitation. And it is time we held the occupants of our highest offices accountable for it—starting with Trump.
Jose Alonso Muñoz is a writer and communications professional based in Washington, D.C, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He writes about queer issues, immigration, TV, and pop culture. His work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Into, and Them. Follow him on Twitter.
This post was written through our Daily Kos freelance program.