Agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 475 employees of the Hyundai Motor-LG Energy Solution joint venture in a raid on the company’s EV battery manufacturing plant near Savannah, Georgia, on Thursday, September 4. Personnel from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) were also involved.
A video released by ICE shows a helicopter flying overhead, an armored vehicle, a convoy of SUVs, agents in military uniforms with sidearms and automatic weapons, and workers in ankle chains and handcuffs lined up, patted down and herded onto buses.
More than 300 of those detained were from South Korea, where the incident received wide publicity and immediately became a top concern of the government. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung told his officials that “all-out necessary measures should be done to support Korean nationals in this matter and to resolve it as fast as possible.”
South Korea Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun said, “If necessary, we will visit Washington directly to discuss the matter with the administration,” while the Korean press reported on the poor sanitary conditions at the processing center to which the detainees were sent.
Steven Schrank, chief special agent of HIS in Atlanta, told the news media that “This operation underscores our commitment to protecting jobs for Georgians and Americans, ensuring a level playing field for businesses that comply with the law, safeguarding the integrity of our economy, and protecting workers from exploitation,” adding that “There was a network of subcontractors and subcontractors for the subcontractors there, so the employees worked for a variety of different companies.”
According to Schrank, it was the “largest single-site enforcement operation” conducted to date, part of “a multi-month criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews, gathered documents and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain judicial search warrants.”
Most of the non-Korean detainees appear to be construction workers from Latin America. All work at the site was halted.
Speaking at the White House, President Trump said “I would say that they were illegal aliens, and ICE was just doing its job.” He also said, “I just heard about that a little while before the news conference.”
That implies that he didn’t know that a massive raid on a flagship South Korean investment was being planned when he met with South Korean President Lee at the White House on August 25.
Believe that if you like, it is impossible to distinguish between duplicity and ignorance in this case, with ignorance of what ICE is doing perhaps being the more alarming possibility.
But some South Koreans are talking about a conspiracy. MBN News, a South Korean TV program sponsored by the Maeil Business Newspaper, declared that “In light of Trump’s statement, growing suspicions arise about the potential ulterior motives behind this recent crackdown.”
“First off,” continues MBN, “there’s speculation that this factory was touted as an achievement of former President Biden when he announced its establishment during his visit to South Korea in May 2022, suggesting a political motive.”
Furthermore, “it’s clearly showing that if American workers are prioritized, even facilities of allied countries could be targeted… this particular raid has put South Korean companies that operated locally on high alert.”
MBN also said that “Despite pouring in billions of dollars, we’re facing intense scrutiny, making us feel blindsided.”
But Kim Dong-suk, the president of the Korean American Grassroots Conference, pointed out that “The Donald Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is the most critical campaign to secure victory in next year’s midterm elections. Korean companies investing in the US should take note and maintain composure until the elections are over.”
Not surprisingly, Hyundai Motor issued a statement reading:
“Hyundai is committed to full compliance with all laws and regulations in every market where we operate. This includes employment verification requirements and immigration laws. We are reviewing our processes to ensure that all parties working on our projects maintain the same high standards of legal compliance that we demand of ourselves. This includes thorough vetting of employment practices by contractors and subcontractors. Hyundai has zero tolerance for those who don’t follow the law.”
It is unfortunate that they didn’t live up to this policy before the raid, but there were extenuating circumstances. While pressing foreign companies to step up their investments in US manufacturing, the Trump administration has simultaneously made it more difficult for them to obtain work visas for employees dispatched to facilitate operations on site.
For this reason, most of the South Koreans detained in Georgia entered the US on the 90-day Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), which can be easily obtained over the internet, or on B-1 visas. Both allow business trips, but neither permit manual labor, which puts factory engineers at risk. Other foreign companies, many of them Korean, face the same difficulty.
The Hyundai-LG factory, officially called HL-GA Battery Company, was originally scheduled to start production in 2026, but depending on the US government’s willingness to compromise, that may now be unrealistic.
And since the batteries will be used in Hyundai, Kia and Genesis EVs produced at the adjacent Hyundai Motor factory, vehicle production may also be delayed. Thousands of anticipated jobs and returns on billions of dollars of investment are likely to be affected.
The practical problems can be solved with time, but the deliberate humiliation of South Korean workers being treated like criminals on video and in photographs shown worldwide is unlikely to be forgotten any time soon.
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