The Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff fired a dozen of its veteran workers last month because they were illegal immigrants. The club had dealt with shoddy paperwork for years for the Latino workers who were fired, according to a report from The Washington Post.
Several of the fired workers had won employee-of-the-month awards and received glowing letters of recommendation. Some were even trusted enough to hold the keys to Eric Trump’s weekend home.
The sudden firings follow last year’s revelations of undocumented labor at a Trump club in New Jersey, where employees were also dismissed. The firings show Trump’s business was relying on undocumented workers even as the president demanded a border wall to keep out such immigrants.
The lawyer for the fired workers, Anibal Romero, who is also representing fired workers from the New Jersey club, is calling for an investigation into the Trump Organization’s use of undocumented workers, according to The Journal News.
The Briarcliff-based workers were told Trump’s company had just audited their immigration documents — the same ones they had submitted years earlier — and found them to be fake.
In an emailed statement to The Washington Post, Eric Trump said: “We are making a broad effort to identify any employee who has given false and fraudulent documents to unlawfully gain employment. Where identified, any individual will be terminated immediately.”
He added that it is one of the reasons “my father is fighting so hard for immigration reform. The system is broken.”
Eric Trump did not answer whether executives had previously been aware that they employed undocumented workers.
The firings highlight a stark tension between Trump’s public stance on immigration and the private conduct of Trump’s business.
In public, Trump has argued that undocumented immigrants have harmed American workers by driving down wages. That was part of why Trump demanded a border wall and has been considering declaring a national emergency to get it.
But, in Briarcliff, Trump seems to have benefited from the same dynamic he denounces. His undocumented workers said they provided Trump with cheap labor. In return, they got steady work and few questions.
