Trump’s Businesses Spent the Shutdown Firing Undocumented Workers

New report sheds further light on the hypocritical labor practices—and the apparent scramble to undo them.

Andrew Milligan/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump lost his battle to shut down the government to get funding for a border wall demand on Friday. But tucked away during the longest shutdown in government history was a quiet plan throughout Trump’s resort businesses to begin firing undocumented workers, many of whom Trump’s companies had employed for years in good standing. 

The Washington Post reported on Saturday about the apparent effort by Trump’s companies, currently led by his two adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, to avert charges of hypocrisy that first began in December after the New York Times featured an undocumented worker at Trump’s New Jersey golf club who spoke out against Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Since the initial Times report, more stories emerged to reveal similar accounts of how the president’s companies, often knowingly, relied on undocumented workers. The apparent scramble to now fire them sheds further light on the hypocrisy of Trump’s immigration agenda, particularly when the president was all but eager to shut down the government for 35 days.

In a statement to the Post, Eric Trump appeared to defend the firings because he believed his father was “working so hard for immigration reform.” That would be news to many, including Trump’s fiercest loyalists

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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