<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/05/immigration-ice-raid-hyundai-georgia>
"South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, has ordered “all-out efforts” to
respond to the arrest of hundreds of its citizens by US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (Ice) during a raid at a factory being built in Georgia to
manufacture car batteries.
Cho Hyun, the foreign minister, said the government had set up a taskforce
following the arrest of 300 South Korean nationals.
He would travel to Washington if necessary and felt a “heavy responsibility”
over the arrests, he added.
The raid, in which US immigration officials said Ice arrested about 475
workers, also sent alarm bells ringing for South Korea’s LG Energy Solution
(LGES), which suspended its employees’ business travel to the US after 47 of
its employees were detained. The factory manufactures batteries to power
Hyundai, Kia and Genesis electric vehicles.
The company asked those currently on business there to return to Korea
immediately and said its executive would travel to the US on Sunday in response
to the arrest of its staff.
The raid is the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the
US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was created in the aftermath of
the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US in New York and Washington
DC.
Although US immigration officials on Friday said there had been 475 arrests,
the Korea Economic Daily earlier reported that about 560 workers at the Hyundai
facility and LGES, had been detained, citing unidentified industry sources.
Hyundai Motor is a South Korean car company but has many international
operations.
The raid on Thursday dealt a setback to the company’s substantial project in
Georgia and was a dramatic iteration of the Trump administration’s harsh
crackdown on immigrants in the US.
The facility is part of what would be the biggest industrial investment in the
state’s history and had been hailed as a huge boost for the economy by
Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
The raid showed the disruptive impact that Donald Trump’s mass deportation
agenda is having on businesses, even as the White House tries to spur more
inflows from foreign investors."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
