Campaign Action
Immigrant employees who formerly worked at Donald Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club say “it’s heartbreaking” to hear him make racist attacks against the immigrant community, considering they used to work for him. “We were there” at Bedminster, former housekeeper Sandra Diaz says in a NowThis video. “We took care of his house. We had direct contact with him, with his wife, with his son, with his in-laws. I’ve been in the same room with them.”
Diaz is among the now dozens of immigrants who have stepped forward to say they worked at Trump’s numerous golf courses despite lacking work authorization. "We share our story because it isn’t just one or two working there at the golf course and resort,” she said. “It isn’t just one or two. There are a lot." While Diaz has since gained legal status, most of the other Trump workers who are bravely speaking out remain undocumented.
Former housekeeper Victorina Morales describes a time the way she was loading a washing machine set a supervisor off. “Stupid!” she screamed, shoving Morales forward. Morales managed to catch herself against a wall, averting banging her head into the machine door. Diaz said she and others were repeatedly threatened with deportation if they complained. “We should be grateful to even have jobs,” she said they were told.
Morales said “it’s just hypocrisy” for Trump to falsely claim that he’s never employed undocumented immigrants. She has said she worked so close to him that she scrubbed his makeup off his clothes and made his bed. “He saw us there at his club, and it wasn’t just me,” she continued. “There were many of us that worked there at Bedminster.”
Many, indeed. Attorneys representing Morales, Diaz, and other former Trump workers say that the real caravan isn’t one made up of asylum-seekers, but instead of workers going to the New Jersey club, where management even helped some procure fake paperwork. “Bedminster golf course employed so many undocumented immigrants,” tweeted Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, “that there’s an entire town in Costa Rica built on Trump paychecks.”
The “explosive front page Washington Post exposé details a decades long multi-state criminal conspiracy, perpetrated by the President of the United States to violate immigration, visa, and trafficking laws,” said attorney David Leopold. Since Morales and Diaz stepped forward last December, a panicked Trump Organization has fired at least 18 undocumented immigrants from at least five golf clubs.
There have now been numerous calls for a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization’s hiring practices, as well as calls for protection from deportation for some of these workers, who attorneys say are victims of crime. While the personal risk is great, they do not regret coming forward because they are speaking the truth. “We had served, and served with love, and served well,” Diaz said. “And we are people who are honorable and know how to work.”
