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

[Spider-Dan]

Freed From U.S. Detention, South Korean Workers Return Home to Tearful Cheers
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.

[Sunstroke]

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...

[Spider-Dan]

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.

[Phishfan]

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.

[Sunstroke]

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

[Phishfan]

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

[Spider-Dan]

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.

Incorrect; this is covered in the Twitter thread 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:



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 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."

[Phishfan]

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

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

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.     

[Phishfan]

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.

[Spider-Dan]

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.

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 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.

[Phishfan]

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

[Spider-Dan]

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?

[Pappy13]

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.

[Phishfan]

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?

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