Worker fired from Trump golf course says Trump knew undocumented people were employed
Article via HuffingtonPost
An undocumented worker who was fired from one of President Trump‘s golf courses over the weekend said he believes Trump knew undocumented people worked at his various clubs.
Gabriel Sedano and multiple other undocumented workers spoke to NBC News about their experiences being employed by the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York. It was their first on-camera appearance since they were abruptly fired last week.
Sedano told NBC’s Kate Snow that he believes the Trump National Golf Club employers knew they were hiring undocumented workers.
“That’s what I think, because they need employees and they don’t check really good,” Serano told Snow. “I cannot be sure about that but he gotta know.”
Sedano said that he spoke to Trump multiple times over the fourteen years that he was employed as a maintenance worker at the club. Sedano told The Washington Post on Saturday that he “started to cry” when he was fired.
He is from Mexico and had worked at the club since 2005.
“I told them they needed to consider us,” Sedano said. I had worked almost 15 years for them in this club, and I’d given the best of myself to this job.”
About a dozen employees were abruptly fired last week from the New York golf club because they were found to be in the country illegally.
The firings followed reports last year that undocumented immigrants were hired and subsequently fired at a Trump property in New Jersey.
The workers in New York were told that the Trump company had recently audited their immigration documents, which were found to be fake, the Post reported. Those documents were submitted years prior to their firing.
Sedano and other workers interviewed by NBC said they presented false documents when they were hired by the Trump club. They told NBC they believe they were hired so that the organization could save money by paying low wages with no benefits to the workers, who were vulnerable due to their immigration status.
The president’s son, Eric Trump, in a statement to NBC pointed to the undocumented workers as “one of the reasons my father is fighting so hard for immigration reform.”
“We have tens of thousands of employees across our properties and have very strict hiring practices,” Eric Trump told the news network. “If any employee submitted false documentation in an attempt to circumvent the law, they will be terminated immediately. We take this issue very seriously.”
Trump has made his hard-line immigration policies a central issue of his presidency, most recently triggering the longest government shutdown in U.S. history over his demand for $5.7 billion in funding for a Southern border wall, which Democrats refused.
The attorney representing Sedano and other undocumented workers who were fired told NBC that they are heading to Capitol Hill to meet with Democrats.