Trump courses used roving migrant crew
OSSINING, N.Y. — For nearly two decades, the Trump Organization has relied on a roving crew of Latin American employees to build fountains and waterfalls, sidewalks and rock walls at the company’s winery and its golf courses from New York to Florida.
Other employees at Trump clubs were so impressed by the laborers — who did strenuous work with heavy stone — that they nicknamed them “Los Picapiedras,” Spanish for “the Flintstones.”
For years, their ranks have included workers who entered the United States illegally, according to two former members of the crew. Another employee, still with the company, said that remains true today.
President Donald Trump “doesn’t want undocumented people in the country,” said one worker, Jorge Castro, a 55-year-old immigrant from Ecuador without legal status who left the company in April after nine years. “But at his properties, he still has them.”
Castro said he worked on seven Trump properties, most recently Trump’s golf club in Northern Virginia. He provided the Washington Post with several years of his pay stubs from Trump’s construction company, Mobile Payroll Construction LLC, as well as photos of him and his colleagues on Trump courses and text messages he exchanged with his boss, including one in January dispatching him to “Bedminster,” Trump’s New Jersey golf course.
Another immigrant who worked for the Trump construction crew, Edmundo Morocho, said he was told by a Trump supervisor to buy fake identity documents on a New York street corner. He said he once hid in the woods of a Trump golf course to avoid being seen by visiting labor union officials.
No change on crew
The hiring practices of the little-known Trump business unit is the latest example of the chasm between the president’s derisive rhetoric about immigrants and his company’s long-standing reliance on workers who cross the border illegally.
And it raises questions about how fully the Trump Organization has followed through on its pledge to more carefully scrutinize the legal status of its workers, even as the Trump administration launched a massive raid of undocumented immigrants, arresting about 680 people in Mississippi this week.
In January, Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons and a top Trump Organization executive, told the Post that the company was “making a broad effort to identify any employee who has given false and fraudulent documents to unlawfully gain employment,” saying any such individuals would be immediately fired.
He also said the company was instituting E-Verify, a voluntary federal program that allows employers to check the immigration status of new hires, “on all of our properties as soon as possible.” And the company began auditing the legal status of its existing employees at its golf courses, firing at least 18.
But nothing changed on the Trump construction crew, according to current and former employees.
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said Mobile Payroll Construction is enrolled in E-Verify for any new hires. The company is still not listed in the public E-Verify database, which was last updated July 1.
The company did not directly respond to requests for comment about the legal status of the Mobile workers but said in a statement that “since this issue was first brought to our attention, we have taken diligent steps, including the use of E-Verify at all of our properties and companies.”
“Those efforts continue, and where an employee is found to have provided fake or fraudulent documentation to unlawfully gain employment, that individual will be terminated. Fortunately, among the thousands of individuals employed by our organization, we have encountered very few instances where this has occurred,” the statement said.
The White House declined to comment.
Since January, the Post has interviewed 43 immigrants without legal status who were employed at Trump properties. They include waiters, maids and greenskeepers, as well as a caretaker at a personal hunting lodge that Trump’s two adult sons own in upstate New York.
In all, at least eight Trump properties have employed immigrants who entered the United States illegally, some as far back as 19 years, the Post has found.
As president, Trump has launched a crusade against illegal immigration, describing Latino migrants as criminals who are part of an “invasion.” Such remarks drew renewed criticism after Saturday’s mass shooting in El Paso, which is under investigation as a hate crime targeting Mexicans and immigrants.
‘Work is everything’
The laborers hired by the Trump construction unit are typically dispatched by Trump construction supervisors to different jobs, driving sometimes hundreds of miles to a golf course or resort, according to the current and former employees. Over the years, some passed weeks or months away from home, bunking in buildings at Trump’s properties, they said.
Their supervisors have paid little attention to their immigration status, workers said.
“If you’re a good worker, papers don’t matter,” Castro said.
Trump interacted personally with some of the construction workers before he was president — greeting employees by name and commenting on minor details of their work, according to Luis Sigua, an immigrant from Ecuador who is still part of the crew. Sigua posted a photo in December 2014 on his Facebook page of himself standing on a golf course next to Trump, who is grinning and giving a thumbs-up.
Sigua declined to share his immigration status but confirmed that some members of the construction unit did not have proper documentation: “Some yes, some no.”
“Politics is nothing to me,” he added. “The work is everything.”
The laborers who worked for the roving construction crew were familiar with the style that Trump used at his properties. They knew which carpet Trump wanted in his ballrooms and that walls should be painted a certain shade of eggshell white.
“You’re paying for the convenience of having these individuals that didn’t have to be trained,” said a former manager at Trump’s golf course in Colts Neck, N.J., who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy.
By using in-house workers, the Trump Organization could also avoid some permitting costs. And undocumented employees are less likely to demand better pay or jump to competing employers, industry experts said.
Pace slows
Trump “was saving a lot of money with us,” said Castro, whose paychecks show that he made $19 an hour beginning in 2016, which increased to $21 an hour in 2018. He said he did not get health insurance or other benefits.
Castro’s attorney, Anibal Romero, said he had filed a complaint with the New York Labor Department — and planned to file another with the federal Labor Department — alleging that Castro was denied some overtime wages and health benefits because he was undocumented.
Since Trump was elected, the pace of his company’s acquisitions and renovations has slowed considerably. His properties also began relying more on outside contractors who would bring in their own employees, according to former members of the inhouse crew.
What used to be a crew of 25 to 30 workers has dropped to fewer than 10, they say. Trump’s construction crew now does mostly routine fix-it tasks or minor renovations, according to one current and two former construction workers.
Sigua, who currently lives in Miami, said some weeks he does maintenance work at Trump’s National Doral resort and then goes elsewhere.
“We don’t stay in one place,” he said.