The fact that impeached president Donald Trump demonizes immigrants in front of cameras while exploiting their labor behind the scenes should be one of the biggest scandals of this administration, yet The Washington Post reports that his winery in Virginia just this past Monday fired at least seven more undocumented workers—but not until after the harvest was over, in true Trump grifter fashion.
“The timing of the firings at the rural Virginia winery, 11 months after the company began purging the ranks of undocumented greenskeepers and cooks at Trump golf courses, came during the vineyard’s winter downtime,” The Washington Post said. “Workers had finished the arduous annual grape harvest, which involved working 60-hour weeks and overnight shifts under floodlights.”
The fired workers, some of whom had worked there for years, told The Washington Post that they believed the timing was intentional. “They didn’t make this decision in the summer because they needed us a lot then,” said tractor driver Omar Miranda. “I think they wanted to get their product out well, the grapes, to make sure that was taken care of, and once things were slow, they could fire us all,” said a second worker, who wanted to stay anonymous. Both worked at the winery for a decade. They haven’t been alone.
In the year since two of Trump’s former housekeepers bravely stepped forward to share their stories about working for him despite lacking permission to be in the U.S., The Washington Post reported that it “has spoken with 48 people who had worked illegally for the Trump Organization at 11 of its properties in Florida, New Jersey, New York and Virginia. These workers spent years—and in some cases nearly two decades—performing the manual labor that keeps Trump’s resorts clean and their visitors fed.”
Some of these workers were so close to Trump that they cleaned his makeup off his shirt collars, yet he has insisted he knows nothing about these workers, despite reportedly admitting in 2013, “You know, the truth is I have a lot of illegals working for me in Miami … You know in Miami, my golf course is tended by all these Hispanics—if it wasn't for them my lawn wouldn't be the lawn it is; it's the best lawn.”
It’s the best lawn, the best hotel, the best taco bowl, blah blah blah, yet he continues to attack these same immigrants for gross political gain. Trump should be hounded on this issue day in and day out. At the same time, we need to remember that the immigrants he attacks—and hires—need to be permanently protected, especially from exploitation from abusive employers like him.
