Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has called for an investigation of Donald Trump’s modeling agency following allegations that several models — all non-US citizens — worked in the United States without proper documentation.
Three former Trump models, all non-US citizens, told Mother Jones they worked for the GOP nominee’s agency while on tourist visas. Immigration laws require employers to seek work authorization for any foreigner they hire. Financial and immigration records included in a recent lawsuit filed by a fourth former Trump model indicate that she also worked for Trump’s agency without a proper visa.
“I am extremely concerned by the claims levied against Trump Model Management and ask that you open an investigation into the company’s employment practices,” Boxer wrote in a Wednesday letter to León Rodríguez, the director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), a part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Boxer wrote that the allegations in Mother Jones’ exposé were “disturbing,” and she called on the agency to “make clear that immigration and labor violations like these will not be tolerated.” The letter was also sent to Labor Secretary Tom Perez.
The report follows a scathing editorial from the Washington Post — “the Grand Wizard of Hypocrisy”, the board writes — calling out Trump’s double-speak on immigration, particularly when it comes to the many questions surrounding the immigration history of his wife, Melania:
A month ago, Donald Trump and officials in his campaign assured voters they would organize a news conference to clear up questions about the legal means by which his Slovenian-born wife, Melania, entered the country in the mid-1990s and obtained a green card several years before they were married in 2005. Those questions persist, the Trump campaign has refused to answer them, and no such news conference has occurred.
Ms. Trump insists she violated no immigration laws; that may prove to be the case. Yet her own sketchy and not-quite-consistent account of her initial immigration status, along with the publication of nude modeling photos of her taken in New York the year before she says she entered the country, have combined to stoke doubts that she played entirely by the rules.
If she didn’t, some sympathy may be in order. U.S. immigration laws are so abstruse, so dysfunctional and so out of step with the demands of the American labor market that — well, it’s no accident that 11 million people live in this country without proper documentation, and that many or most of them have been here for 15 years or longer.
Less sympathy would be due Mr. Trump, who, having built his campaign around vilifying illegal immigrants, looks like a Grand Wizard of Hypocrisy. And having spent months as the most prominent exponent of the detestable “birther” movement, badgering the president to release his plainly valid and unexceptional birth certificate, the Republican presidential nominee now can’t be bothered to come clean on legitimate questions about the terms under which his wife entered the country and remained here.
