November 5, 2016

Report: Melania Trump Worked in the United States Without a Visa

She has previously claimed she “correctly went through the legal process when arriving in the USA.”

Melania Trump, wife of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks in Pennsylvania on Thursday.Patrick Semansky/AP

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Melania Trump booked 10 paid modeling gigs in the United States in 1996 before formally receiving a legal work visa, according to a report published by the Associated Press late Friday night.

New documents uncovered by the AP—including financial ledgers and contracts—contradict Trump’s account in September that she “correctly went through the legal process when arriving in the USA.”

The 1996 modeling assignments for the Slovenia-born model, then Melania Knauss, totaled $20,056 and occurred in the seven weeks before she received her work visa, according to the AP.

The documents obtained by the AP show she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between Sept. 10 and Oct. 15, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the U.S. and look for work but not perform paid work in the country. The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa.

Questions about Trump’s early immigration status have swirled ever since the New York Post published racy photo-spreads of the GOP nominee’s wife in August. At the time, the tabloid reported the photos were taken in Manhattan in 1995, raising the possibility that Trump worked without proper authorization. Trump’s lawyer, Michael J. Wildes, issued a statement flatly denying the story, and the French photographer who shot the photo spread later told Mother Jones he couldn’t remember the exact date of the shoot. (The Post corrected its story to note the photo shoot took place in 1996,and appeared in a 1997 issue of French Max magazine.)

Mother Jones first reported in August that Donald Trump’s own prestigious modeling agency, Trump Model Management, used foreign models without proper work visas—a common practice in the modeling industry. Two former models recounted stories of being encouraged to lie to customs officials when traveling to the US on tourist visas. Their time working in New York City effectively became a lengthy audition for work visas.

Read Mother Jones’s exclusive reporting on Trump Model Management and its use of foreign models.

According to a personal financial disclosure that Donald Trump filed in May, he earned nearly $2 million from the company, in which he holds an 85 percent stake.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has continued to pursue hard-line anti-immigration policies in the lead-up to Tuesday’s election. “We will deport all criminal aliens,” he declared to a rally in Selma, North Carolina on Thursday. He has also promised a crackdown on visitors to the United States who overstay their visas, saying that when any American citizen “loses their job to an illegal immigrant, the rights of that American citizen have been violated.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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