1 of 7 | A screengrab from a video released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency shows agents executing a federal search warrant at Hyundai Motor Group’s battery plant in Ellabell, Ga., Thursday. Photo courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump on Sunday sent a warning to countries that have manufacturing plants in the United States to “please respect our Nation’s Immigration Laws.”
“Your Investments are welcome, and we encourage you to LEGALLY bring your very smart people … and we will make it quickly and legally possible for you to do so,” Trump said on Truth Social. He said he expected overseas firms to “hire and train American Workers.”
Many Koreans, though, continue to be dismayed by the actions of one of their nation’s longtime political and strategic allies. There were 475 workers arrested during the Thursday raid at a factory in Georgia, which Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution operate. Most of the workers detained were from South Korea.
The Thursday raid was announced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and included officers from other agencies, such as Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It marked one of the largest immigrant raids in modern American history, and it was not immediately clear why the ATF participated in the crackdown.
The plant in Ellabell, Ga., about 35 miles west of Savannah, is still under construction. It will make batteries that power electric vehicles and was billed by Georgia’s Republican governor in 2022 as “the largest economic development project in our state’s history.”
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said the raid had no connection to the economic ties between the two countries. He said the United States has “a great relationship” with South Korea.
However, Koreans were stunned at the raid. The country agreed in July to buy $100 billion in U.S. energy and invest $350 billion in the country in order to get a lower tariff rate.
Newspapers and lawmakers are expressing outrage in South Korea, calling the Trump administration “unusual,” “impulsive” and “contradictory.”
“I’m really speechless and furious,” Choi Jong-gun, former vice foreign minister, told the Washington Post. “We spend a lot of money in the United States, and we get slapped in the face.”
The U.S. authorities had a search warrant and said the workers were working or living here illegally.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s office said Sunday that detainees will be returned home on a chartered flight.
Georgia Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives Tori Branum, who claims she tipped off the authorities about the plant, has said that South Korean companies are part of a “bait-and-switch” when they promise to hire Americans but bring in Koreans to work.
“Her justification of ‘protecting American jobs’ rings hollow when her actions sabotage Georgia’s long-term prosperity,” said a South Korean business publication, CEO News. It said Branum was using the issue to gain a political edge in her campaign.
“We are there to help boost up American industries … and once they are set up, there will be good infrastructure for increasing American employment,” Choi said. “But what we saw was those Koreans chained with handcuffs and treated as if they were terrorists or a bunch of thugs.”
The types of visas that the detained workers were using is unclear. But South Korean businesses have faced challenges navigating the U.S. visa process. There is a limit on H1-B work visas, so they’ve used other short-term visas that left the workers in a “gray zone,” said James Kim, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, to the Washington Post.
Some workers coming to the U.S. get a B-1 visa, which allows some work like attending conferences or business meetings.
“When you are sending people for factories involving semiconductors or electric batteries, you need people on the floor who know what they’re doing. And because this is still relatively a new industry, it’s not that easy finding those people,” Kim said.
Using alternative visas wasn’t an issue under the President Joe Biden administration, which did not have the same focus on immigration enforcement as Trump, Kim said. But that has changed.
White House border czar Tom Homan told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that the Trump administration would continue focusing on workplaces for immigration raids.
“We’re going to do more worksite enforcement operations,” CNBC reported Homan said. “These companies that hire illegal aliens, they undercut their competition that’s paying U.S. citizen salaries.”
In a statement Friday, U.S. Attorney Margaret Heap said more than 400 agents took part in the raid, which was dubbed “Operation Low Voltage.”
“The goal of this operation is to reduce illegal employment and prevent employers from gaining an unfair advantage by hiring unauthorized workers,” Heap said. “Another goal is to protect unauthorized workers from exploitation.”
Hyundai told NBC News Monday that business travel to the U.S. is still happening, with some trips subject to internal review.
