Human rights abuses under the Trump administration are nothing new, but as his attack on migrants goes from bad to worse, it’s jogging our collective memory.

Last week, when Trump announced plans to fine migrants for not self-deporting, one TikTok user remembered something that feels suspiciously similar to the current aggressive scapegoating of undocumented folks under the current regime.

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User @tommiebrownie worked for Vice years ago, back when they had a deal with HBO to produce investigative documentaries. In 2016, before Trump’s first term began, the Vice team went to Dubai to cover Trump’s treatment of migrant workers employed by his properties both in India and China. What the found was evidence of foul play on an alarming scale.

At Trump’s International Golf Club, his property in Dubai, Vice reporters uncovered migrants trapped in a situation where they allegedly had to pay Trump to stay in a horrific living situation while he held their documents hostage.

“Donald Trump invited these migrants to come work for him in Dubai,” Tommie reports, “but once getting there, he seized all of their documents [including passports and birth certificates.] Then he said that in order to get them back, he would have to buy them back from him.”

He also apparently charged the workers daily rent to live in total squalor, and the rent they were forced to pay was more than they were making at the resort per day.

Obviously none of this surprising in the least, but it is important to take into account when we’re reckoning with the lie of Trump being somehow “good at business.” If he has any business acumen, it’s because he’s fully willing to exploit workers and ignore human rights to create these luxury properties, and clearly his plan for bringing manufacturing back to the States via those idiotic tariffs is more of the same.

For those interested, here’s the full Vice on HBO episode from 2016:

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