Undocumented Trump Worker Will Be at His SOTU

Victorina Morales will attend as special guest of NJ Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 31, 2019 7:22 AM CST
She Spoke of Working Illegally for Trump. She'll Be at His SOTU
Victorina Morales, left, and Sandra Diaz, right, recall their experiences working at President Trump's golf resort in Bedminster, NJ, during an interview on Dec. 7, 2018, in New York.   (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Victorina Morales figured she'd be fired after speaking to the New York Times last month about working as an undocumented immigrant for one of President Trump's golf resorts. Morales now tells the Times she's not sure she ever was let go; she simply stopped going to work right before the first Times story was published and hasn't heard anything since. But she'll once more be in Trump's presence on Tuesday when she watches him deliver his State of the Union address. Morales—a Guatemala native who's been in the US since 1999, and who says she was hired by the Trump Organization in 2013 using paperwork she says her supervisors knew was fake—was invited to be the guest of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, her Democratic New Jersey congresswoman.

"I'm not scared to show my face," she says. "I am not speaking for me, I'm speaking on behalf of millions of undocumented immigrants who live in the United States." Watson Coleman says in a statement: "I've invited Victorina so that [Trump] may look her in her eyes to tell his lies to a familiar face." Per the Washington Post, the Trump Organization fired about a dozen undocumented workers earlier this month after the Times story ran, and Eric Trump says that all of the family's properties will now implement the E-Verify system to confirm job applicants can work in the US. Per the AP, his father had said during the 2016 campaign that E-Verify was already used at Trump properties, and that there should be a "huge financial penalty" for organizations that hire undocumented workers. (More undocumented immigrant stories.)

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