The raid came after months of strained negotiations between Washington and Seoul over tariffs and investments and further tested the relationship between the two countries.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment today.
In July, Trump said he had reached a deal with South Korea to bring down an announced tariff rate of 25% to 15% instead, stressing that the country would invest US$350 billion ($595b) in the US and purchase US$100b in American energy.
Major South Korean conglomerates, such as Hyundai and LG, would play a big role in driving those investments.
The raid at the electric-vehicle battery factory being built at the Bryan County site - a joint venture between Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, which is part of the broader LG group - came as a surprise to many in South Korea after state officials celebrated the investment, with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (Republican) calling it “the largest project in state history” in 2023.
Hyundai has pledged in recent weeks to invest US$26b in the US and said in a statement that none of those arrested were employed directly by the company.
Citing a statement from LG Energy Solution, South Korea’s Yonhap News reported that 47 of the detained workers were LG Energy Solution employees - 46 were South Korean and one was from Indonesia - and about 250 were from subcontractors.
Video released by ICE showed workers being lined up outside the factory, patted down by officers and put into handcuffs.
The majority of them were taken to an ICE detention centre in Folkston, Georgia, according to a news briefing by Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Georgia and Alabama.
Schrank said that some of the workers had crossed into the country illegally, some were working in violation of their visas, and some had overstayed their visas.
The arrests were part of an ongoing, months-long investigation that involved multiple federal agencies, he said, adding that no criminal charges have been filed yet.
Sarah Owings, an immigration lawyer who is representing about 30 of the South Koreans arrested in the raid, said many of the people detained only came to the US in recent weeks under visas that permitted them to work in limited capacities at the Hyundai plant. She said her clients maintain they have not violated the terms of these visas.
“This is going to be very alarming to the business community if people can be arrested and prosecuted on immigration proceedings on this basis,” Owings said. “It’s going to make people think twice about establishing factories in the US.”
Cho Hyun, South Korea’s Foreign Minister, said the Government was “deeply concerned” and felt “a heavy sense of responsibility over the arrests of our nationals”.
At a government meeting, South Korea’s presidential chief of staff, Kang Hoon Sik, pledged to work on reviewing and improving the visa system for workers travelling to the US to prevent similar incidents in the future, Yonhap News reported.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, border tsar Tom Homan said he expects the Administration to perform “a lot more worksite enforcement operations” like the Hyundai factory raid.
“No one hires an illegal alien out of the goodness of their heart,” Homan said.
“They hire them because they can work them harder, pay them less, and undercut the competition that hires US citizen employees. They drive wages down.”
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