Trump’s Company Quietly Sought Record Number of Foreign Workers
The Trump Organization has requested a record 184 foreign workers in 2025 for Mar-a-Lago and other sites.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s company quietly sought nearly 200 foreign workers this year for Mar-a-Lago and other businesses despite his hardline stance on immigration—even as he railed against immigration.
According to Department of Labor data, the Trump Organization has requested a record 184 foreign workers in 2025 for Mar-a-Lago, two golf clubs, and a Virginia winery. The company’s visa requests have climbed steadily—from 121 in 2021. Over Trump’s years in office, his businesses have sought at least 566 foreign workers, Forbes reported.
The positions are mostly low-wage like servers, housekeepers, clerks, kitchen staff, and farm workers earning between $15.58 and $27.91 an hour. Since 2008, the Trump Organization has requested a total of 2,033 foreign workers through H-2A and H-2B visas.
Trump wants foreign workers to prop up Mar-a-Lago.
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
During his Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham, Trump defended a different visa class—H-1B, reserved for highly skilled workers—calling them necessary for people with “certain talents.” Ingraham pushed back: “If you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.”
Under U.S. law, companies can hire foreign labor through temporary visas when they cannot fill jobs domestically. The Trump Organization routinely uses those programs, which require approval from both the Labor and Homeland Security departments before the State Department issues visas abroad.
During his Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham, Trump defended H-1B visas.
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Among the Trump properties seeking foreign workers this year are Mar-a-Lago and his golf clubs in Bedminster, New Jersey, and West Palm Beach, Florida—two of which were previously investigated for improperly storing classified documents, a probe dropped after Trump’s reelection in 2024.
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Trump, who controls his businesses through the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, continues to earn income from them while in office. The Trump Organization confirmed in an April filing in the United Kingdom that he retains control.
The Trump winery is expected to seek more visas in December for its 2026 season, Forbes reported.
The White House declined to comment. The Trump Organization was also contacted for comment.
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