The Trump Organization said late Tuesday that it was implementing a system to weed out unauthorized immigrants who try to get jobs at its properties.
The move followed reports in The New York Times last month that the president’s company was employing people at its flagship golf club in New Jersey who were in the country illegally.
“We are actively engaged in uniforming this process across our properties and will institute E-verify at any property not currently utilizing this system,’’ Eric Trump, an executive vice president of the company, said in a statement. “As a company we take this obligation very seriously and when faced with a situation in which an employee has presented false and fraudulent documentation, we will take appropriate action.’’
Thousands of employers have enrolled voluntarily in the government’s E-Verify electronic system, which checks documents provided by new hires against Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records. A mismatch suggests that the person is unauthorized to work.
All federal contractors must use E-Verify, and 22 states require at least some private and public employers to do so. The federal E-Verify database suggested that the Trump Organization did not use heightened employment document verification procedures at several of its properties, meaning that the chances of employing undocumented workers was high.
The Times reported in December that undocumented immigrants had been employed for years at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., as housekeepers, landscapers, and kitchen staff.
They were kept on the payroll despite the fact that management was aware that they had used phony documents to secure employment, as is common among unauthorized immigrants.
Since the articles were published, about a dozen workers deemed ineligible to work in the United States because they lacked legal immigration status have been terminated at the Bedminster club, according to people familiar with the matter.
Another dozen were fired at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester this month, a development first reported by The Washington Post.
One undocumented worker who worked at the Bedminster club and left after she publicly disclosed her immigration status will attend the State of the Union address next week, courtesy of a Democrat.
Victorina Morales, who was born in Guatemala, will be a guest of Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey when the president speaks to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.
Lawmakers — and presidents — often seek to make a statement with the guests they invite to the State of the Union. Morales has been one of the most vocal of the undocumented workers who have recently gone public to describe their experiences working for the Trump company.
Eric Trump said that hiring immigrants without legal documents was not a problem unique to the Trump Organization and that it “demonstrates that our immigration system is severely broken and needs to be fixed immediately.’’
The Trump Organization said last month that it would immediately terminate those who were not authorized to work in the United States.
But for several weeks it failed to respond to questions about what measures it was taking to rectify the situation.
President Trump has made border security and protecting jobs for Americans cornerstones of his presidency, from the border wall he has pledged to build to the workplace raids and payroll audits that his administration has carried out.
Trump launched his bid for the GOP presidential nomination in June 2015, declaring that the United States had become a “dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.’’
In August 2015, Trump told The Times that his companies employed only people with legal work papers.
When the Trump International Hotel opened for business in Washington, the president boasted that he had used E-Verify to ensure that only those legally entitled to work were hired.
“We didn’t have one illegal immigrant on the job,’’ Trump said then.
Material from The Washington Post was included in this story.
