Another Trump Business Caught With Undocumented Workers

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As President Donald Trump continues to found his political platform on virulent antagonism of immigrant communities, his businesses keep benefiting from immigrant labor. Now, it’s come out that late this year, following the annual harvest of grapes, the Virginia-based Trump Winery abruptly fired seven undocumented immigrant workers. Those firings unfolded almost a year after undocumented workers were fired from other Trump properties. Some of those other previous employees had even gotten assistance from supervisors in forging paperwork and had their status used as personal leverage against them.

Now, one of those who were fired from Trump Winery says they believe the president’s business sought to get as much out of them as possible before kicking them to the curb, even while the president continues with his public campaign to depict undocumented immigrants as dangerous and just leeches on the economy.

Omar Miranda, who’s from Honduras and worked as a tractor driver for the president’s wine business for more than a decade but was suddenly fired this week, commented:

‘They didn’t make this decision in the summer because they needed us a lot then. I think they wanted to get their product out well, the grapes, to make sure that was taken care of, and once things were slow, they could fire us all.’

Lawyer Anibal Romero, who is apparently advising Miranda and has already represented a number of undocumented workers left in similar situations by the president’s businesses, added:

‘Donald Trump has known about these workers for months. He waits until the fields are tended, grapes picked, wine made. He then discards them like a used paper bag. Happy New Year. You’re fired.’

That certainly matches the president’s overall attitude towards immigrants. Rather than reflecting any kind of actual threat posed by their communities, Trump has founded entire policies on little more than racist imagination.

For example, at one point when a particularly large group of asylum seekers were heading to the U.S., Trump tweeted in a frenzy:

Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border. Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!’

Around that same time, Trump even claimed that “unknown Middle Easterners” were trying to infiltrate the United States via those groups of asylum seekers, but even he eventually admitted that there was actually “no evidence” for that idea. That didn’t stop him from running with it anyway!

Ahead of the 2020 elections, he has dialed into hate. He has kept up his campaign to build a wall along the southern U.S. border that’s set to be paid for by American taxpayers, and he has railed endlessly against Democrats and the marginalized communities that they seek to protect. It’s not getting him far. The House’s recent formal impeachment of him after his Ukraine quid pro quo scandal came out exemplifies how Americans are unifying against his hatred and belligerence.