Marco Rubio attacked Donald Trump Thursday night over his immigration stance, and said that position is at odds with Trump’s history of hiring illegal immigrants, and getting fined for it.
“If he builds the wall the way he built Trump Tower, he’ll be using illegal immigrants to build it,” Rubio said of Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It’s an important point that you make on immigration, this is a huge issue for the country,” Rubio said to Trump at another point in the debate. “But I also think that if you’re going to claim that if you’re going to lift this into the campaign that you acknowledge that, for example, you’re the only person on this stage that has ever been fined for hiring to work on your projects illegally.”
“No, no, no,” Trump shot back. “I’m the only one on this stage that’s hired people. You haven’t hired anybody. I’ve hired tens of thousands of people over my job, you’ve hired no one.”
Rubio, not backing down from his first attack against Trump of the night, said Trump “hired workers from Poland and he had to pay $100 million.”
“People can look it up, I’m sure people are googling it right now,” the Florida senator said. “That happened.”
“I’ve hired tens of thousands of people,” Trump repeated. “He brings up something from 30 years ago, and it worked out perfectly, and by the way, the laws were totally different.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz later joined Rubio in his criticism of Trump’s hiring practices.
“Marco is right,” he said. “A federal court found Donald guilty of a conspiracy to hire people illegally.”
