A group of immigrants fired from President Donald Trump’s golf clubs said they want to meet him at the White House to point out why they should not be deported.
The 21 maids, gardeners, and other employees dismissed this year from five Trump clubs this week asked their former employer in a letter to remember all the hard work they did and give them the opportunity to present their reasons to remain in the country.
“I have hopes that he will read the letter. I think he has a heart, “said Gabriel Sedano, who worked 14 years as a maintenance person at the Trump club in Westchester County, New York, before being fired in January.
The response sent on Wednesday in a Letter from the White House, told the workers that “we are reviewing your message.” The White House did not respond to a request on Friday to make comments.
Problems for Trump workers began in December, when an employee who was arranging the president’s bed at her club owned by Bedminster, New Jersey, told The New York Times that a supervisor there knew that she and other maids and employees had no permission to be in the country, and that took advantage of their immigration status if they complained about working conditions.
Later, workers from other Trump clubs who did not have the proper documents-some who had worked for him for a decade or more-began to speak, and the Trump Organization began firing them.
The Trump Organization has said that it does not tolerate workers who lie about their immigration status and that it was not until recently that they discovered that their employees were illegally in the country. The Trump Organization did not respond to requests to make statements about the proposed meeting at the White House.
Democrats in Congress this year asked the FBI to investigate whether the Trump Organization acted as a “criminal enterprise” for hiring workers knowing they had false papers and even helped them obtain those documents, as some of the dismissed employees claim. .
An attorney for Trump’s 39 former employees, Anibal Romero, said the FBI interviewed him, as did the attorney general’s offices in New Jersey and New York, although he declined to comment on the matter.