ICE raids Georgia Hyundai plant to deport S.Korean workers promised to Trump

[Spider-Dan]

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.

[Spider-Dan]

Stephen Miller’s Quota Likely Drove Korean Arrests In Immigration Raid

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.

[Phishfan]

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.

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).

[Spider-Dan]

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.  So why are you parroting conservative media excuses?

[Phishfan]

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.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

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.

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.