We have an immigration system where millions of people eligible for immigrant visas wait on queues for decades. Employers and businesses in the country rely on highly skilled undocumented agricultural workers. Yes, that’s right, I said highly skilled. It takes years to learn how to pick fruit or operate a dairy effectively. Do it for a week and you’ll understand.
We live in a system where politicians have failed to address changing immigration patterns and needs for decades. Meanwhile, millions of families live in dread of arbitrary, violent raids by an agency with a consistent problem of racism and abuse. ICE targets poor, powerless undocumented immigrants for the smallest of infractions. It rarely pursues powerful employers who abuse undocumented workers knowing they are unlikely to report such abuse or poor working conditions.
If Democratic leaders wish to, they have a golden opportunity to force compromise on immigration, improve the lives of millions of people and further fundamental justice.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (CA-16) chairs the House sub-committee on Immigration and Border Security. Rep. Jerry Nadler (NY-17) chairs the House Judiciary committee. Together, they have jurisdiction over ICE’s law enforcement activities.
House Judiciary can call ICE leadership to testify at any time. I would suggest Rep. Nadler and Rep. Lofgren do this and ask ICE leaders why their agency has not questioned, prosecuted, or arrested Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. for violating immigration law.
There are several lines of questioning Rep. Nadler and Lofgren can pursue. Have ICE agents initiated an investigation of the Trump golf course? Has anyone at ICE ever demurred such an investigation because these properties are owned by the president and his family? And so on.
The Trump family has openly violated labor laws for decades, repeatedly putting the lives of undocumented workers at risk.
In 1980, under pressure to begin construction on what would become his signature project, Donald J. Trump employed a crew of 200 undocumented Polish workers who worked in 12-hour shifts, without gloves, hard hats or masks, to demolish the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue, where the 58-story, golden-hued Trump Tower now stands.
The workers were paid as little as $4 an hour for their dangerous labor, less than half the union wage, if they got paid at all. — www.nytimes.com/...
Trump settled that dispute for $1 million.
Late last year, Victorina Morales and Sandra Diaz revealed to the NY Times that they had been employed at Trump’s Bedminster golf course for several years, despite being undocumented. The two women approached the Times because they were alarmed at the racist rhetoric being employed by Trump to demonize people like them. Meanwhile, they were employed by his company, and in Ms. Morales’ case were making his bed.
Since that revelation, the Trump organization has fired dozens of workers at numerous golf clubs.
Ms. Cruz and about a dozen other employees — housekeepers, landscapers and a head chef — at the club, Trump National Golf Club, were fired Jan. 18 because they were in the country illegally, according to interviews with Ms. Cruz and the former workers’ lawyer. — www.nytimes.com/...
“I started to cry,” said Gabriel Sedano, a former maintenance worker from Mexico who was among those fired. He had worked at the club since 2005. “I told them they needed to consider us. I had worked almost 15 years for them in this club, and I’d given the best of myself to this job.”
At the Bedminster club, workers without legal status were hired even longer ago — back in 2002, when the course was being built.
So far, at least 18 people have been fired after an internal audit showed their papers were fraudulent, according to Eric Trump, a son of the president who runs the company with his brother, Donald Trump Jr. — www.washingtonpost.com/...
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump claimed he used e-Verify to validate workers’ documentation. The Washington Post has since reported that numerous Trump properties were not using the electronic validation system. Numerous workers have reported that senior managers were aware they lacked proper documentation.
In a letter earlier this month to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) requested that federal authorities immediately open a probe into the hiring of illegal workers by Trump’s golf clubs. — www.washingtonpost.com/...
Last year, ICE traumatized an Ohio community by arresting workers and employers at potato processing plants because undocumented workers were employed there.
I suggest Rep. Nadler and Rep. Lofgren ask ICE leadership why they have turned a blind eye towards similar violations by the Trump organization for decades, and when they plan to arrest Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
Trump is a bully. He has spent his entire life bullying the powerless. There is only one language bullies understands, power. In 1990, when New York lenders threatened to force him into bankruptcy, Trump caved to their every demand to protect himself and his flamboyant lifestyle.
Democrats in the House have power over Trump, they should use it to deliver protections for the immigrant communities Trump has demonized for years.
Use this power to expose the hypocrisy and lies the Trump family has engaged in for decades.
Use this power to expose Republican hypocrisy on immigration.
Use this power to demand that DACA recipients receive permanent protections.
Use this power to hold powerful people like the Trumps accountable for knowingly flouting laws and exploiting the fears of undocumented workers.
Use this power to show Trump he cannot get away with bullying immigrants.
Oh, and while they’re at it, throw in a few jabs about the press conference Trump promised us to clarify Melania Trump’s immigrant status.
It’s time for Rep. Lofgren and Rep. Nadler to call ICE’s leadership in for hearings and question them vigorously about their lack of action on the Trump case. It would be good politics to do so.
— @subirgrewal