Donald Trump isn't backing down on his immigration rants. In fact, he yanked out all the stops on Monday, dragging the old "disease" trope out of mothballs as he ranted yet again about immigration.
"The largest suppliers of heroin, cocaine and other illicit drugs are Mexican cartels that arrange to have Mexican immigrants trying to cross the borders and smuggle in the drugs. The Border Patrol knows this," Trump wrote. "Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border. The United States has become a dumping ground for Mexico and, in fact, for many other parts of the world."
The man has mastered the art of blatant hypocrisy, as the Washington Post reports:
But a Trump company may be relying on some undocumented workers to finish the $200 million hotel, which will sit five blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, according to several who work there. A Trump spokeswoman said the company and its contractors follow all applicable laws. But in light of Trump’s comments, some of the workers at the site said they are now worried about their jobs — while others simply expressed disgust over the opinions of the man ultimately responsible for the creation of those jobs.
All of them said they have been talking about Trump ever since his inflammatory remarks dominated coverage of his presidential announcement on June 16.
“It’s something ironic,” said Ivan Arellano, 29, who is from Mexico and obtained legal status through marriage. He now works as a mason laying the stonework for the lobby floor and walls of what will become the Trump International Hotel.
“The majority of us are Hispanics, many who came illegally,” Arellano said in Spanish. “And we’re all here working very hard to build a better life for our families.”
Interviews with about 15 laborers helping renovate the Old Post Office Pavilion revealed that many of them had crossed the U.S-Mexico border illegally before they eventually settled in the Washington region to build new lives.
These men aren't much different from the millions here in the United States who entered illegally. They're hard workers, they value family above all else, and they are not the caricature "scary people" Trump claims they are.
Workers scoffed at his claims.
“Do you think that when we’re hanging out there from the eighth floor that we’re raping or selling drugs?” Ramon Alvarez, 48, a window worker from El Salvador, said during a break Monday morning just outside the construction site. “We’re risking our lives and our health. A lot of the chemicals we deal with are toxic.”
In response to questions from The Washington Post, Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, issued a statement saying that the company and its contractors followed all applicable U.S. immigration laws when hiring the site’s several hundred workers.
“Our contractors are required to have prospective employees produce documentation that establishes identity and employment eligibility in compliance with immigration law,” the e-mailed statement said.
Of course they did, because these workers came here from Mexico illegally and then either married, got green cards, or did whatever they had to do to get work permits. Trump isn't differentiating between them. He's simply dumping on all Mexicans as disease-laden moochers.
And no Republican is really doing much to refute those claims, because to do that would risk their standing in the primaries. That's really the pathetic part.
