Thread by @mateagold

Incredible reporting by @partlowj @Fahrenthold provides the best look yet at how Trump's private business has relied on the labor of undocumented workers -- even as he railed they were stealing jobs from Americans.

wapo.st/2G3tTfG?tid=ss…

Trump delivered one of those campaign speeches at his club in Westchester, vowing to U.S. citizens, "we’re going to protect your job because, let me tell you, our jobs are being stripped from our country like we’re babies.”

Before Trump's speech, Adela Garcia, an undocumented worker herself, vacuumed the carpet inside the club, as captured in this Reuters photo.

She was fired by the Trump Organization on Jan. 18.

Garcia and other workers said many had worked at Trump's Westchester club for years.

Gabriel Sedano, a former maintenance worker from Mexico who was among those fired, said he had been employed by Trump's company since 2005. “ I’d given the best of myself to this job," he said. "I’d never done anything wrong, only work and work."

One former Westchester manager characterized the attitude at the club as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“It didn’t matter. They didn’t care [about immigration status]. “It was, ‘Get the cheapest labor possible.’ ”

Alejandro Juarez, a native of Mexico who had worked as a server and food runner since 2007, said Eric Trump greeted him by name at a party in December. “I was serving hors d’oeuvres,” Juarez recalled, “and he told me, ‘Thanks, Alejandro. Thanks for everything, Okay?'”

Eric Trump did not respond to questions about whether executives had previously been aware that they employed undocumented workers.

In a statement, Eric Trump said, “We are making a broad effort to identify any employee who has given false and fraudulent documents to unlawfully gain employment."

He added that it is one of the reasons “my father is fighting so hard for immigration reform. The system is broken.”

Margarita Cruz, a housekeeping employee from Mexico who was fired after eight years at the club, said, "When they take our taxes, we count as people. Why don’t we count in other things?”

She feels, she added, that, “we don’t exist.”

Hear Cruz and other workers tell their stories in this striking @DDaltonBennett @jnebraska video: washingtonpost.com/video/national…