The Trump Organization in January started firing undocumented workers who had made beds and tended the grounds at five Trump golf courses for more than a decade, following reports that the Trumps had a practice of using undocumented labor at their golf properties. Among the 33 fired immigrants The Washington Post spoke with, Juan Quintero also had a second job as the groundskeeper at Leather Hill Preserve, a private 171-acre hunting retreat in Wingdale, New York, owned by Eric and Donald Trump Jr., plus some partners.
Quintero, 42, arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager and was hired 18 years ago by the Trump National Golf Course Hudson Valley's previous owners. When Donald Trump bought the course in 2009, Quintero says, he showed the new owners the same fake green card he used to get the job. And when one of his bosses at the golf course approached him about also working at Leather Hill in 2016, he wasn't asked about his legal status but did sign a contract promising he "will not disclose to anyone, and always keep secret" any details about the property and its owners, the Post reports.
Quintero said he believes Eric Trump, with whom he communicated regularly by text, knew he was working illegally for at least a year after he didn't respond to a request for his Social Security number. He was proud to work for the Trumps, doesn't know what he's going to do now, and is worried about being targeted for deportation, he said, but he decided to speak up because of President Trump's frequent disparaging comments about Latino immigrants.
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"I want them to recognize the good that we do," Quintero told the Post. "Eighteen years of working [at the golf club] should shed a light that we are not the people that he says we are: bad, rapist, drug dealers, the worst that they say that we are."
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