A Jamaican model is demanding that Donald Trump’s modeling agency compensate her the nearly $75,000 that she is due.
ABC News reports that Alexia Palmer moved to New York and signed with Trump Model Management five years ago, under the impression that she would be paid $75,000 over the course of three years. However, Palmer, now 22, said that she only received a mere $4,980 and has filed a lawsuit to get the remainder of the money.
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“That’s what slavery people do,” Palmer said to ABC. “You work and don’t get no money.”
Palmer says that the agency withheld tens of thousands of dollars, charging her for travel, head shots, make up, car service and “administrative fees.”
Under the terms of her H-1B work visa, which the agency secured for her, she was prohibited from working with another modeling agency within the United States.
“[This is] a blatant violation of the immigration laws, a blatant violation of getting people from a foreign land to this country and exploiting them,” Palmer’s attorney, Naresh Gehi, said to ABC News.
Trump’s attorney, Alan Garten, says that Palmer’s claims are untrue, claiming that the agency simply served as the woman’s manager rather than employer. According to Garten, Palmer’s earning reflect the number of jobs she booked—he says that she worked 10 days in the three-year period.
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“[The $75,000] is a good-faith estimate of what a model who is marginally successful may make,” Garten said to ABC. “Actually, most models who are marginally successful make far more than that. She just wasn’t.”
Trump has not issued a statement on the lawsuit.