According to disturbing new reporting from The Washington Post, Donald Trump “systematically cheated” some of his golf course workers because of their undocumented status.
The report recounts instances in which some undocumented employees at Trump’s golf club were forced to work without pay and denied vacation days, health insurance and promotions.
The Post notes that some of the practices “could violate labor laws” and are currently under investigation by the New York attorney general.
More from the report:
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In interviews, six former Trump workers told The Washington Post that they felt systematically cheated because they were undocumented. Some told The Post about being denied promotions, vacation days and health insurance, which were offered to legal employees. The same pattern of unpaid labor was also described by a former manager.
Others recounted practices that could violate labor laws. Two told The Post that they had been required to do unpaid side work. Two others said managers made them work 60-hour weeks without paying them overtime.
A spokesman for the New York attorney general’s office confirmed that it had received complaints from workers about conditions at the club but declined to comment further.
Trump’s business practices expose his immigration hypocrisy
The revelations only confirm what much of the country already knows about Donald Trump: He is a con man who has spent his entire career in business skirting the law and abusing his employees.
The difference now is that he’s president. These consistently unethical practices aren’t going unnoticed anymore. They are currently under investigation by the New York attorney general.
Of course, the inquiry into how Trump runs his business won’t just pose legal problems for him. It will also complicate his long-running political argument that the nation’s biggest threat is undocumented immigrants.
The president may call immigration a “national emergency” today as he tries to rile up his base ahead of a tough reelection campaign, but it certainly boosted his business.
As The Washington Post notes, all of this “could raise awkward political questions for Trump, who has made stopping illegal immigration a centerpiece of his presidency and his reelection campaign but faces allegations that his business benefited from low-paid, undocumented workers.”
At the end of the day, it’s clear that Trump doesn’t give a damn about undocumented immigrants other than how much he can exploit them to his benefit – whether to boost his business profits or his presidential campaign.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
