They’ve cared for his family’s needs, cooked for him, kept his golf course greens freshly manicured, and dusted his golf trophies. Some worked for him for as long as a decade—until they were fired. Now, nearly two dozen undocumented and formerly undocumented immigrants who worked for Donald Trump are requesting a personal meeting with their former boss.
“We know you and your family; we worked very hard to make your clubs a success and to keep your members and visitors happy,” 21 former workers write in a letter to Trump. “You know many of us and will recall how hard we worked for you, your family, and your golf clubs. We all took great pride in our hard work and years of service to make your clubs successful.”
But for their hard work they were canned—some as recently as a few months ago—and not because their work was lacking, but because their boss’ hypocrisy was on full display. Trump’s signature issue has been to rail against the undocumented, when his golf courses have actually employed them, and that’s the reality across the U.S.: Immigrants, including those without legal status, help keep industries running. These workers should be legalized, and it’s something they want to tell Trump in person.
“You know we are hard workers and that we are not criminals or seeking a free ride in America,” they continue. “We pay our taxes”—your regular reminder that immigrants pay a lot of taxes annually—“love our faith and our family, and simply want to find a place for ourselves to make America even better … however, in order for this to happen in harmony, we need the opportunity to legalize our immigration status.”
Trump has largely evaded being confronted head-on about his hypocrisy, until last week, when he admitted that, sure, he knows some businesses hire undocumented immigrants, but claimed that he didn’t know anything about his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, “because I don't run it.” Yet during a 2013 meeting with a group of Dreamers, he said, "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.”
Present-day Trump further claimed that his businesses no longer employ undocumented workers—“We’ve ended whatever they did,” he said, again throwing someone else under the bus—but that’s bull, claimed Sandra Diaz, a former Bedminster housekeeper and letter signatory, saying that she knows of at least half a dozen current workers without legal status at his Virginia winery. “He’s still lying as always.”
Trump Winery, owned by Trump and operated by his son Eric, already has a noted history of using foreign workers, requesting nearly two dozen work visas as recently as January. But a May report from Univision found the winery has also exploited undocumented immigrant labor, both in the vineyard itself and in the hotel on the grounds, making them put in long hours from sunrise to sunset, without overtime pay. Workers said vineyard management “pretends not to know” it’s hiring undocumented immigrants.
The pretending stretches all the way to the top, with a business owner who pretends not to know what’s happening at the clubs he visits so often that he’s run up a $100 million taxpayer-funded tab. Yet one letter signatory, former handyman Gabriel Sedano, said that during his time working at the Westchester, New York, club, he had keys to Trump’s residence, including “all the codes. I knew him personally.” Yet, “I was the first one fired,” he said. “There was a list. I was the first one."
These workers have since stepped forward to make their case to both members of Congress and the American people, and are now hoping to make their case directly to Trump, asking that he “not deport us and our friends and family.” The White House has not agreed to anything, and probably won’t. But should they get that meeting, like the one that the group of Dreamers got in 2013, Jose Gabriel Juarez, another former Westchester worker, said he would actually thank Trump for the job—“and I would ask him for the opportunity to be here legally in this country.”
