An undocumented immigrant who worked for years at President Trump’s luxury golf complex in New Jersey and later revealed that he employed many immigrants who are illegally in the country was placed in deportation proceedings.
Victorina Morales, 47, worked for more than five years as a housekeeper at the Bedminster, NJ club, using a forged ID that she said her supervisors knew was false. Their revelations, first revealed by The New York Times in December 2018, led undocumented workers at various Trump properties to come forward.
Dozens of others were fired in the following months by the Trump Organization, which owns and operates golf resorts in several states, after the company began investigating employee records.
Ms. Morales, a Guatemalan immigrant, was notified by federal authorities this week that she had been placed in deportation proceedings that could result in deportation. You can remain in the country only if an immigration judge approves your asylum application.
In a letter reviewed by The Times, the US Citizenship and Immigration Service said the agency had not approved his initial asylum application because it had not shown that “extraordinary circumstances” had prevented him from filing an asylum application within one year after arriving in the country. country as needed.
Morales, who witnessed her father’s murder, crossed the border illegally in 1999. She filed for asylum with her husband in late 2018, and the latest decision applied to both.
The immigration agency emphasized that it was not denying his asylum application, but was referring his case to immigration courts for removal proceedings, where a judge will review his asylum status.
Due to the backlog of immigration cases, it is almost certain that Ms. Morales will be allowed to remain in the United States for several years while her case is under review. She was not available for an interview on Thursday.
Anibal Romero, his attorney, said the agency’s ruling this week “is a serious legal matter, and my concern at the moment is for the safety and well-being of my client.” He said he would have no other comment.
After Ms. Morales arrived in New Jersey, she worked in warehouses that pack consumer products, such as soap and baby diapers. She was hired on Trump’s property in 2013.
During his time at the golf complex, he said, he often cleaned Mr. Trump’s personal rooms and had various personal interactions with him. He said he had praised her for her meticulous cleanliness and work ethic, sometimes dispensing large tips.
But Morales said she had been hurt by Trump’s derogatory public comments after he took office on Latin American immigrants, equating them with violent criminals.
It was that, she said, along with what she said were abusive comments from a supervisor at work about her intelligence and immigration status, which made her decide that she could no longer remain silent.
“We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him earn money,” he said at the time.
Ms. Morales was trained by Sandra Díaz, a native of Costa Rica who is now a legal resident of the United States. Ms. Diaz also introduced herself admitting that she had been in the country without legal permission while working at Bedminster.
Trump Organization executives have said they had no way of knowing that the workers had submitted false employment documents, and Trump said he also did not know that his properties had hired undocumented immigrants.
During the presidential campaign, when the Trump International Hotel opened in Washington, Trump boasted that he used an electronic employment system, E-Verify, to verify that only those legally authorized to work there had been hired.
“We did not have an illegal immigrant at work,” Trump said then.
But throughout his campaign and after becoming president, Morales had turned up to work on his golf course. A co-worker brought her and other undocumented workers to the resort every day, she said, because it was known that they could not legally obtain driver’s licenses.
After introducing herself, Ms. Morales rose to fame. In February of last year, she was among the 20 immigrants, many of them facing possible deportation, on the list of those who were sitting in the safe gallery for the annual State of the Union address. In December, he visited Las Vegas and received a hug from Joseph R. Biden Jr., the alleged Democratic presidential candidate. At a campaign event, she brandished a copy of a service certificate she had received from the White House Communications Agency.
After applying for asylum, Ms. Morales received a work permit, which allowed her to obtain a cleaning job as a legal worker at a hotel in Manhattan. She lost that job due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Among the nearly 50 undocumented workers identified as workers on Trump properties since Ms. Morales’ disclosures, none are known to have been deported.
