NJ women expose Trump's employment of undocumented immigrants at Bedminster golf club: report
BEDMINSTER – Two Bound Brook women are speaking out about President Donald Trump's practice of employing undocumented immigrants at his golf clubs.
Reporters for The Washington Post extensively interviewed, verified and researched the claims made by the two women who were in the country illegally and worked as housekeepers at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. The anecdotes were published in a recent report by The Post.
Sandra Diaz, an immigrant from Costa Rica who now lives in Bound Brook, worked in the Trump family villa at his Bedminster club.
She told The Post that as part of her job, it was important "not to wear makeup or perfume that might leave the faintest trace of her presence."
While at work, she would tie her hair back, put on latex gloves and wear "delicate paper shoe coverings," according to the report.
"As Donald Trump’s personal housekeeper, Diaz was dealing with a fussy celebrity owner who presided like a monarch over the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster long before he was elevated to president," The Post reported. "She was an immigrant from Costa Rica working illegally for Trump with a fake Social Security card she had bought for $50. Being invisible was her life’s work."
Trump met many of the illegal workers, The Post found.
There were three questions Trump would ask the immigrant workers as he strolled the grounds of his resorts and golf clubs inspecting their work, according to The Post.
“Your name. How much time you’d been there. And if you like it,” Margarita Cruz, a housekeeper, told The Post. The conversations often ended with Trump pulling out $50 and $100 bills for tips.
Once Trump was elected president, however, the undocumented workers faced "stomach-churning comments from wealthy members" of the clubs, according to the report.
Gabriel Juarez, who had been head waiter for a decade at one of Trump’s New York golf clubs, told The Post that one club member said to him: “You’re still here? How come we can’t get rid of you? I’m going to call Trump, you [expletive] Mexican."
READ:Illegal immigrant who worked at Trump National Golf Club files for asylum
It was behavior like this that led, Diaz, along with Victorina Morales, her successor as Trump’s housekeeper in Bedminster who also emigrated to Bound Brook, decided to be seen, according to the report.
After leaving her job in Bedminster, Diaz became a permanent U.S. resident according to The Post, after her daughter, a U.S. citizen, petitioned on her behalf. Her husband and son, however, remained undocumented, and Diaz wanted help getting them legal residency. She had seen Anibal Romero, an immigration lawyer.
For the report, The Post spoke with 48 people who had worked illegally for the Trump Organization at 11 of its properties in New Jersey, New York, Florida and Virginia. The Post reviewed pay stubs and tax documents.
Trump, who still owns the Trump Organization but has left control to his elder sons, has said he does not know whether it employs undocumented workers, according to The Post.
“Well, that I don’t know. Because I don’t run it,” he told reporters in July, according to the report. “But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that, because it seems to me, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”
A press aide of the president's denied all the claims and questions presented by The Post's reporting.