The Trump administration has made no secret of its antipathy for immigrants, embodied by campaign-hyped plans for a border wall, an endless stream of dark anti-immigrant rhetoric, and ICE raids that swept up workers in factories and farms last year. But the Trump business empire has taken a completely different approach to immigration, hiring undocumented workers to bolster its rank and file when financially convenient.
New reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times reveals just how quickly the Trump Organization will dump its immigrant workers, too, if it’s deemed a savvy business decision: The Trump Winery, a vineyard in Virginia owned by the president’s son, Eric Trump, fired a group of seven undocumented workers earlier this week, immediately after the grueling harvest season.
The decision to time the firings directly after the busiest season was strategic and deliberate, according to Anibal Romero, a lawyer who’s currently representing one of the workers fired from Trump winery. “Getting rid of them at that point could have caused problems for the wine,” Romero told the New York Times.
Romero, who has represented around 40 undocumented clients who’ve worked under the Trump Organization umbrella, said the company acted opportunistically, believing it could rely on cheap, expendable labor despite the president’s hardline anti-immigrant policies and brash rhetoric.
Romero told the Times:
This isn’t the first time a glaring contradiction between the president’s immigration policy and his empire’s business strategy has come to light. Last year, the Washington Post revealed how the Trump Organization used a roving manual labor crew comprised largely of undocumented workers for nearly two decades. The crew, reportedly nicknamed “Los Picapiedras” (Spanish for “The Flintstones”), had a hand in various labor projects throughout the Trump orbit, performing masonry and construction work at properties around the country.
The president’s disdain for undocumented immigrants is seemingly selective, and makes for better headlines when bellowed before a rabid audience and snapping cameras. Even the First Lady, Melania Trump, a self-styled example of decorum and manners in a White House bereft of them, earned U.S. citizenship through rather dubious means, and got her own parents citizenship through so-called “chain migration“—policies which allow citizens to acquire residency for relatives—which her husband has decried on Twitter.
When anti-immigrant fervor suits the president’s rhetorical agenda, he’ll shout it from any campaign rally stage. But when it comes to his company’s bottom line or his third wife, he looks the other way.
