Invites undocumented worker fired

N.J. lawmaker invites undocumented worker fired by Trump Organization to State of the Union

By REBECCA MORIN

An undocumented employee who was recently fired from President Donald Trump’s golf club in New Jersey will attend the State of the Union address next week.

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J) invited Victorina Morales, who worked at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., as her guest for the president’s address to Congress on Tuesday, the congresswoman's office announced on Wednesday. The Washington Post first reported the invitation.

Morales, who was born in Guatemala but has been in the United States for nearly 20 years, recently spoke out about her undocumented status and was fired shortly after.

Watson Coleman in a statement said that Trump justified shutting the government down “by demonizing immigrants as the scourge of the country and the root of our nation’s crime and insecurity.“ She added that Trump‘s company, which is now run by his children, “relied extensively on the hard work of undocumented immigrants like my constituent Victorina to keep his resorts clean and his putting greens trimmed.“

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president’s demand for $5.7 billion to build a border wall led to a five-week partial shutdown of the government, the longest in history. Democrats have refused to allocate the money for the barrier.

Morales first spoke to The New York Times in early December; she and other undocumented employees discussed working at the president’s New Jersey club, and described several interactions with him.

A dozen undocumented employees were fired this month from another Trump National Golf Club, this one in Westchester County, N.Y., The Washington Post reported.

E-Verify, a federal program that evaluates the immigration status of worker, will be implemented across all Trump Organization properties, the president’s son Eric Trump announced Tuesday.

Trump has previously bragged about not hiring undocumented workers at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, saying he used E-Verify to hire workers.

Several Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, last year invited so-called Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — as their guests to the State of the Union.

Illegal immigration has become a main part of Trump’s platform since the beginning of his campaign, when he first attacked migrants from Mexico as “rapists” and claimed that Mexico wasn’t sending its best people to the U.S. The Trump administration also implemented the practice of separating migrant families at the border, a policy that was later ended after a widespread backlash that led to a court order to reunify the families.

Trump over the past several months has also criticized caravans of Central American migrants that were heading to the southern border to seek asylum.