Immigrant workers are keeping Trump’s multiple estates running even as the president indiscriminately targets them for raids and deportation.
Forbes reports that Trump has used at least 1,880 seasonal immigrant workers at Mar-a-Lago and other golf clubs since 2008. His winery has hired 31 since the year started, even as his administration is working to deport thousands every single day.
These workers are on short-term temporary H-2A agricultural and H-2B hospitality visas—status that would very well put them at high risk of deportation if they weren’t cleaning Trump’s clubs. These workers make between $14.17 and $23.01 an hour working as servers, cooks, groundskeepers, and more.
Wouldn’t someone who claims to love American workers as much as Trump does, who waxes poetic about reinvigorating domestic markets, make it a point to staff his lavish estates with the U.S. laborers he’s fighting for? It’s clear that the president, like most avaricious businessmen, is cool with immigrant work—as long as it’s cheap, noncommittal, and for him.