‘We are tired of the abuse’: Undocumented workers at Trump’s N.J. golf club speak out

Victorina Morales told the New York Times she could no longer remain silent after Trump’s remarks equating Latin American immigrants with violent criminals and receiving disparaging comments from a supervisor at work.

President Trump waves as he walks down the steps of Air Force One with his grandchildren, Arabella Kushner, center, and Joseph Kushner, right, after arriving at Morristown Municipal Airport to begin his summer vacation at his Bedminster golf club in August 2017.Read moreEvan Vucci

by Oona Goodin-Smith

Published Dec. 6, 2018, 6:56 p.m. ET

For five years, Victorina Morales has scrubbed, polished, and dusted at President Trump’s New Jersey golf club — all while working as an undocumented immigrant.

In an article published Thursday, Morales, a Guatemalan native who entered the United States illegally, told the New York Times that she has worked as a housekeeper at Trump’s Bedminster Golf Club since 2013, despite the president’s campaign claims that his organization “didn’t have one illegal immigrant on the job.”

Morales, who crossed into the country in 1999, began working for Trump as a maid at the Bedminster club in 2013, telling a supervisor that she had no legal working documents, according to the Times.

Another woman, Sandra Diaz, a Costa Rica native who has since become a legal resident of the United States, said she, too, worked for Trump in Bedminster while an undocumented immigrant, from 2010 to 2013.

“There are many people without papers,” Diaz told the Times.

Both women described the president as demanding but kind.

Morales, 45, told the publication that she “has made Donald J. Trump’s bed, cleaned his toilet and dusted his crystal golf trophies,” but said she could no longer remain silent after Trump’s remarks comparing Latin American immigrants to violent criminals and receiving disparaging comments from a supervisor at work.

“We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money,” she said to the Times. “We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humiliation.”

In a statement, the Trump Organization told the Times that the company has “tens of thousands of employees across our properties and have very strict hiring practices."

"If an employee submitted false documentation in an attempt to circumvent the law, they will be terminated immediately,” the statement said.

New Jersey is home to an estimated half million undocumented immigrants, who make up nearly 8 percent of the Garden State’s workforce.

You can read the full New York Times article here.