The Bedminster golf club has recently terminated several workers who were determined to be ineligible to work in the country, according to several people familiar with the matter, following a New York Times report that revealed that immigrants who presented false documents were knowingly kept on the payroll, sometimes for years.
A lawyer representing the women has met with investigators, presenting what he said was evidence that managers at the club knew that some workers were in the country illegally and that at least one supervisor helped an employee obtain forged working documents.
In the latest revelation, Emma Torres, an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador who prepared food at the club, said that members of the kitchen staff were asked in 2016, as Donald Trump was in the midst of his campaign for the White House, to write their names, addresses and other details, including their Social Security numbers, on a list of employees that would be submitted to the Secret Service for clearance.
“When I learned this is for the Secret Service to see the records of everyone because they are giving protection to Mr. Trump, I rushed to human resources,” Torres said in an interview. “I thought, God, what will I do?” Torres said she had used a fake Social Security number when she applied for her job.
She said that she told a human resources employee, whose name she does not know, that she did not have legal status. She said the woman replied, “'It’s OK. No problem.’ She scratched me off the list.”
The woman then asked Torres for names of other kitchen workers who might be undocumented, which Torres said she provided.
There is no evidence that Trump knew of the unlawful status of employees at the club. But halting illegal immigration, by stanching the influx across the border and deporting immigrants living inside the country, and saving jobs for American workers have been core priorities of his administration.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.