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Freed From U.S. Detention, South Korean Workers Return Home to Tearful Cheers (https://archive.ph/hr9uO)
The workers, whose detention in a workplace immigration sweep set off outrage in South Korea, expressed both relief and anger.

Hundreds of South Korean workers who had been detained in shackles in the United States landed in their home country on Friday, met by their family members who applauded and tearfully hugged them. [...]

The day before the arrests, word spread at the facility that a raid was imminent, said two of the workers, who declined to be named out of concern for repercussions over speaking out. Many other employees did not report for work on the day of the raid, but most of the South Koreans did, expecting that they would not be a target of immigration raids, they said.
“I am angry because we would not have been arrested if we had been told not to come to work,” said Jeong Gwan-won, 32, an electrician for an LG subcontractor.
He said he had used the visa-waiver program, which allows travel to the United States for 90 days for tourism or business.
“Our employers told us that it was OK for us to come to work for them” in the United States, Mr. Jeong said. “They said it was the usual practice.”
Returning workers described the trauma of seeing armored vehicles and armed agents rolling in, and of being handcuffed and shackled at the ankles by the immigration officials.
“I will never visit the United States again,” Mr. Jeong said.[...]

President Trump has demanded that allies like South Korea and Japan vastly expand their investments in the United States and build new plants to help rejuvenate its manufacturing industry and create jobs. But in the aftermath of the raid, South Korea complained that its companies have had a hard time finding skilled technicians in the United States needed to build factories or getting work visas to bring such workers from South Korea.
So companies like LG and its subcontractors brought workers from South Korea on B-1 short-term business visas or under a visa-waiver program.

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So, then: Trump makes a deal for South Korea to expand their US investments, then when SK companies send workers to help get these new investments up and running, Trump sends his goon squads to humiliate them and treat them like major felons before deporting them.

We are in for an economic catastrophe that will make the Great Recession look like patty cakes.

If the impending diplomatic catastrophe doesn't kill us first...

This is how the good people of South Korea were treated for trying to comply with Trump's tariff extortion coercing them to build more US factories:

https://twitter.com/koryodynasty/status/1964318947546964309

This video is pretty much exactly what you'd think it is: legal workers from South Korea, with valid business visas, put in full body shackles and marched on to a bus.  The twitter thread covers more of the disgusting way they were treated over the week they were held in detention.

I have heard that they didn't have valid work visas. Your own original post says this also. B1 business visas do not cover labor jobs. It's for things like conferences, setting estates,  brokering business deals,  etc. These people side stepped getting a work visa and were not here under legal terms.

^^^ ...and a president with a single shred of diplomacy would have worked that out without needing shackles.

I'm sure some more tactful measures could have been used

Incorrect; this is covered in the Twitter thread (https://twitter.com/koryodynasty/status/1967071087365419096) I linked.  There were workers with "B1 visas for a 2-month work meetings and training trip. They were body-searched while wearing hard hat and safety boots at 10am on 4 September. ICE gave arrest warrant forms at 1:20pm with no explanation and no Miranda rights were read."

You can also confirm this on the US Citizenship & Immigration Services website (https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-visitors-for-business/b-1-temporary-business-visitor):

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1075215393993523230/1417266129243738193/image.png?ex=68c9db70&is=68c889f0&hm=973ce25e675ca6f6b6b8d4a9920e82d4415fc91ecb9fda4893ce05252aa66d68)

So, then: South Korean companies have a hard time finding people needed to get these new investments up and running.  They send people here to train Americans, and we throw them in cells before humiliating them and treating them as dangerous international felons.

This entire event was the Trump Administration generating a photo op (https://twitter.com/koryodynasty/status/1964288684204703870) that they could tout to their base; that's it.  Right-wing media has seized on "B-1 visas" as an excuse for this treatment, but it's baseless; B-1 visas are valid and appropriate for what they were sent here to do.

America will pay the economic price for this "leadership."

It doesn't take hundreds of workers to "train" the construction of a facility. You can argue once the combined stages accumulated but I doubt it even gets to that number then. This is a construction project. What do they do have 1:1 training? I will give you some may have not misused the B1 but I would also argue most of them would not have been in this raid

They were building an auto factory not McDonald's. 

Between the building design and construction, designing and ordering the production machines, hiring the workers that would be staffing the factory, translators etc A team of 316 is pretty light.

And even if some had misused the B1, due process requires a hearing with the burden on the gov't to prove that not just arrest everyone with zero proof.     

You are still twisting and I bet speaking without any inside knowledge of construction of a plant. I have worked as a painter on a Georgia Pacific plant and while I admit the equipment for battery manufacturing is more complex, they were not here for that. Find me an article saying they were here for something other than co struction please.

They were literally there for that:

The workers’ return ended a weeklong drama that began Thursday last week when armed U.S. immigration officials stormed a major electronic vehicle battery plant that Hyundai and LG are building in Ellabell, Ga.

The plant in question (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Motor_Group_Metaplant_America) originally started construction in 2022 and was finished two years later; production began in October 2024.  The workers are there for an expansion in battery production, as part of a partnership between Hyundai and LG Energy (a battery company).  The deported immigrants were LG Energy employees and subcontractors.

I'm not sure why you seem to believe a battery company flew in hundreds of workers from South Korea to - hang drywall? tile floors? - but there is no reason to believe that is what they were doing.

The  EV plant was completed. Your links still say the LG battery plant is under construction.

The battery plant (a joint venture between Hyundai and LG Energy) is an expansion to the (completed and operational) Hyundai-owned auto plant.

So we've resolved the other objections, then?

It's a good thing the Dolphins don't have to try 3 point attempts against these moving goal posts. They'd never make a single one.

What other issues? It has been my singular issue that the plant these employees were working at was under construction. You can't have that many trainers for construction

You directly said "they were not there for battery manufacturing" but it is a battery manufacturing plant.

I strongly doubt you have the professional experience or knowledge of the project to evaluate the appropriate number of trainers or consultants during the process of building the plant and getting it ready to produce.  You're simply accepting and repeating conservative talking points of "they weren't the right type of visas"; first you said, "They're not allowed to perform labor" and then when I pointed out that trainers and consultants are valid and appropriate, you switched to "There are too many of them"; at no point have you justified any claim that these employees were providing impermissible labor.

Again, I am extremely skeptical that you are qualified to accurately assess the correct number of trainers at a manufacturing site that currently has ~2000 employees out of a planned 8000+ by 2031.  Consider that these employees can be there to both train management & other trainers, as well as the number of translators likely needed.

Stephen Miller’s Quota Likely Drove Korean Arrests In Immigration Raid (https://archive.ph/IFhv4)

On August 31, 2025, U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Ray issued a warrant to allow ICE to search the Georgia battery plant, a joint venture of Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, naming four Mexican nationals as “targeted persons.” (The Savannah Morning News obtained a copy of the search warrant.) Nothing in the warrant indicated ICE intended to arrest South Korean workers helping to set up a battery plant for electric vehicles slated to employ 2,000 U.S. workers.

On September 4, 2025, approximately 400 state and federal law enforcement personnel raided the battery plant. While they came upon 175 to 200 Latino workers, not all of them working unlawfully, ICE agents also encountered hundreds of South Korean workers.

Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney at Kuck Baxter in Atlanta, represents 11 individuals arrested in the raid and pieced together what happened at the facility. ICE did not bring Korean language interpreters—proof Koreans were not the intended target—but managed to determine that the South Koreans at the facility entered on B-1 visas or the Electronic System for Travel Authorization known as ESTA.

“Not thinking that B-1 and ESTA allow ‘after-sales service and installation,’ which is what the Koreans were doing in setting up the equipment to make the batteries at the facility, ICE agents decided on the spot to arrest all the South Korean workers,” said Kuck in an interview. One of Kuck’s South Korean clients had just arrived the night before and was sitting in a conference room in a business suit, attending a meeting, when arrested by ICE.

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I don't know how anyone can continue to defend this action at this point.  This is very obviously a case of ICE goons deciding they had an easy chance to get some footage of putting some brown people in chains.

And you have shown no evidence that this plant was in no stage other than construction. Your article even said it was under construction. Your 8000 number encompasses the entirety of what is already completed along with the stage in construction.  Remember Hyundai has said that these weren't their employees. They were working under LG which is there strictly as the battery portion of the campus (that feels like an appropriate term).

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that "plant under construction" means "i-beams and rebar."  You can still have consultants there to help determine which rooms need to be built and how they should be configured.  The engineers responsible for the battery manufacturing operations would have important input during the construction phase; that does not mean they themselves were operating backhoes or pouring concrete.

Furthermore, your continued insistence that there were too many trainers has a glaring problem: it concedes that SOME number of them were valid and necessary trainers, yet they were deported too!  The ICE operation did practically ZERO investigation; they were there on a warrant for four Mexicans, saw a bunch of Koreans, and snatched them all up the same day.

A plant that is planned to add 6000+ employees over the next 6 years has an understandable need for trainers to train the trainers, especially when they are expanding into new technology (for that site).  This seems rather obvious and self-evident.  And you don't have to wait until the building is finished and all the necessary equipment is production-ready to begin training staff.

Finally: the battery expansion is a joint venture between LG Energy and Hyundai, as I have already pointed out; LG Energy helps produce the batteries for the EVs being manufactured in the adjacent auto plant.  Hyundai's staff will also need training from LG Energy.

On a separate note: previously, you seemed to chafe when I suggested that you thought Democrats should abandon transgender athlete politics because you agreed with the Republican position on it.  But I don't know what you expect someone to think when you make a sustained effort to defend a political position.  Right now, you're on page 2 of defending this ICE raid... so do you agree with it, or what exactly?  If you don't agree with it, why are you offering excuse after excuse to rationalize it?  There's no official statement from ICE claiming that the deported Korean workers were caught performing illegal labor; rather, the opposite (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/hyundai-factory-ice-raid-legal-visa).  So why are you parroting conservative media excuses?

Spider, if it makes you happy I will concede some of them may not have violated their visa and I feel bad for those that didn't. Maybe I should have been clearer on that. My belief is that more likely were working illegally. As  for going back to the transgender discussion, I never said Democrats should abandon it because I agree with the position that it is unfair for a biological female to compete against transgender females in certain competition. I said your own party doesn't have a consensus on the subject and that throwing it into the middle of a discussion is not going to win over the people you need to vote your way in future elections.

There is zero evidence that they were working illegally, beyond the vague allegation that "it seemed like a lot of people" by folks who had zero knowledge of how many people would be an appropriate number for the size of the project nor what the project was. 

However, even if some of them were exceeding the scope of their visa, which would be almost impossible to do as their are very few restriction other than length of time.  Then the proper way of handling it is to have a hearing and present evidence that a specific individual is violating their visa and deport that individual, not deport in mass because of a vague allegation that some might be.