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Documents reveal penniless Scot purposely traveled to America for better life rather than overstaying vacation as the tycoon claims.
A poor, low-earning worker seeking America's promised lands is exactly the type of immigrant Donald Trump's campaign is seeking to control.
And yet it has been revealed that Trump's very own mother was one such migrant.
Less than ninety years ago, Mary Anne Trump née Macleod arrived in New York from the desolate Scottish Isle of Lewis, with just $50 to her name, to pursue work as a 'domestic'.
Contrary to Trump's well-told line, that his mother had traveled to America 'on holiday' and ended up never leaving, immigration documents seen by The National reveal that her true story was one of deliberate migration.
An uncomfortable truth perhaps, for the Republican's presumptive nominee whose campaign website declares: 'The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working-class Americans – including immigrants themselves and their children – to earn a middle-class wage.'
Now, the mystery that has previously clouded the story of Trump's mother's migration to America is made clear.
But Macleod was not only leaving abject poverty in Scotland in search of a better life, she was also fleeing from a family scandal: The sister who first hosted her in New York, Mrs Catherine Reid, had given birth out of wedlock in her home country in 1920, according to the paper.
A devastating situation that forced Reid and three other sisters out of their hometown of Tong to America.
The youngest of ten children, Macleod was born to a fisherman and crofter father, Malcom Macleod, and mother Mary Macleod, née Smith.
Macleod's second language was English, which she learned at Tong school. Her immigration form indicates that she likely left there aged 14.
With three of her sisters having gone before her, and all married or working by the time Macleod was 17, the prospect of America must have seemed a glittering one.
Her future husband, Fred Trump, was himself the son of German immigrants, who had migrated when rules were less strict.
But she made the journey in 1930, six years after Congress passed laws restricting immigration.
Her twin-propeller liner set sail from Glasgow on May of that year and she arrived, nine days later, the day after she turned 18.
The passenger list on this journey makes her intentions clear. In the section asking 'whether alien intends to return to country whence he (sic) came', her answer is 'no'.
On those same documents she gives her occupation as 'domestic' - either servant or maid - a position she held for at least four years upon her arrival into America, according to the paper.
Macleod migrated legally and permanently and in the document declared she wished to be a citizen of America and would be staying permanently in the USA.
And as a May 1930 edition of her local paper The Stornoway Gazette writes: 'There is quite an exodus of young people, male and female, from this parish for Canada and the United States...
'They leave home with a determination to succeed and because of their courage, endurance and reliability they are generally successful.'
And successful she certainly was.
It is not clear how the pair met, but Fred Trump, seven years her senior, was already an established builder and developer at that time and may have been introduced to Macleod by her sister, Catherine.
By April 1935, Macleod was a resident at the Trump family home on 175/24 Devonshire Road in Jamaica, the middle-class area of Long Island, Queens, according to the 1940 census.
In January 1936, they wed at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, officiated by the Rev Dr George Buttrick, after which a wedding reception was held for 25 guests at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan.
Curiously, her naturalization didn't come until some 12 years after she immigrated, and six years after she married.
Though strange, it is not unusual for there to be a delay. Indeed Donald Trump's first wife Ivana did not become naturalized until 11 years after they wed.
Macleod's husband was on the make, and she was described as 'charming, vivacious and shrewd' - a perfect companion to Fred Trump, who at that time was building, selling or renting tens of thousands of houses across New York.
Her role was one of homemaker, hostess and partner - and she became the definition of upwardly mobile. Once a domestic help herself, she was to oversaw a large family household with her very own maid - an Irish woman, named Jane Cassidy, herself a naturalized citizen.
She can now add mother of a potential future president of the United States to that list.
Fred and Mary Anne Trump had five children, though their second Fred Jr died aged 42, following a life blighted by alcoholism.
Donald Trump was a middle child. One sister Maryanne Barry, 79, is a much-respected federal judge, while his other sister, Elizabeth, worked in banking.
His younger brother, Robert, was born two years after Trump and was later president of their father's firm.
Trump's beloved mother died aged 88 at the Long Island Jewish Medical Centre in New Hyde Park in 2000, just over a year after her husband Fred died, aged 93.
Her death notice in the Stornoway Gazette reads: 'Peacefully in New York on 7th August, Mary Ann Trump, aged 88 years. Daughter of the late Malcolm and Mary Macleod, 5 Tong. Much missed.'