With Hyundai raid, Trump's immigration crackdown runs into his push for
foreign investment
[September 12, 2025] By
DIDI TANG and PAUL WISEMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s push to revitalize American
manufacturing by luring foreign investment into the U.S. has run smack
into one of his other priorities: cracking down on illegal immigration.
Hardly a week after immigration authorities raided a sprawling Hyundai
battery plant in Georgia, detained more than 300 South Korean workers
and showed video of some of them shackled in chains, South Korean
President Lee Jae Myung warned that the country's other companies may be
reluctant to take up Trump’s invitation to pour money into the United
States.
The detained South Koreans were released Thursday and most were flown
home.
If the U.S. can't promptly issue visas to the technicians and other
skilled workers needed to launch plants, then “establishing a local
factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages
or become very difficult for our companies,” Lee said Thursday. “They
will wonder whether they should even do it.”
The raid and subsequent diplomatic crisis show how the Trump
administration's mass deportation goals are running up against its
efforts to bring in money from abroad to drive the U.S. economy and
create more jobs. Moves like workplace immigration enforcement and visa
restrictions could risk alienating allies that are pledging to invest
hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. to avoid high tariffs.
South Korea is already a big investor in the US
Trump’s economic agenda is built around using hefty tariffs on
imports, including a 15% levy on South Korean products, as a cudgel to
force manufacturing to return to the U.S. He’s repeatedly said foreign
companies can escape his tariffs if they produce in America. South
Korea, already a top investor, pledged to invest $350 billion in the
U.S. when the two sides announced a trade deal in July.
It made more investments in new construction, such as factories, on
previously undeveloped land than any other country in 2022. Last year,
it ranked 12th in the world with $93 billion in total American
investment — including acquisitions of existing companies, according to
the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
But the dramatic roundup of South Koreans and others working to set up
the battery plant threatens to put a chill on the investment push.
Indeed, Trump seems to be trying to undo the damage.
While demanding that foreign investors “LEGALLY bring your very smart
people,” Trump also promised to “make it quickly and legally possible
for you to do so.”
“President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the
United States the best place in the world to do business, while also
enforcing federal immigration laws,” White House spokeswoman Abigail
Jackson said in a statement Thursday.
For now, the South Koreans are furious and immigration experts are
puzzled. It's been common practice for decades for foreign companies —
such as the Japanese and German carmakers that have built factories in
the American Midwest and South — to send technical specialists from
their home countries to help open plants in the United States. Most of
them train U.S. workers, then go home.
“Japanese managers, senior engineers, other technical experts had to
come to the United States to set this stuff up,” said Lee Branstetter, a
professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University
who's studied Japanese auto plants in the U.S.
American companies do the same thing, sending U.S. workers overseas
temporarily to get operations started.
[to top of second column] |
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung speaks during a news conference
to mark 100 days in office at the Blue House in Seoul, South Korea,
Sept, 11, 2025. (Kim Hong-Ji/Pool Photo via AP)
 Some experts call it a baffling,
‘performative’ raid
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched the roundup last
week at a manufacturing site that state officials have touted as
Georgia’s largest economic development project.
“It's really baffling to me why this raid would have occurred,” said
Ben Armstrong, executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Industrial Performance Center. “The existence of these
workers shouldn't have been a surprise.”
U.S. immigration officials could have audited the workers' documents
without the drama, retired immigration lawyer Dan Kowalski said,
adding that “raiding and arresting and putting them in chains and
shackles is 100% performative.”
It had to do with “wanting to look tough — arresting as many
foreigners as possible for the photo-op,” said Kowalski, who is now
a writer and editor.
U.S. work visa categories make it a challenge to bring in foreign
workers quickly and easily, said Kevin Miner, an immigration lawyer
in Atlanta.
Some run on a highly competitive lottery system, are for seasonal
workers and have a cap, or are restricted to managers and
executives. Other short-term visas have strict limits on employment.
After meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week in
Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said they agreed
to set up a joint working group for discussions on creating a new
visa category to make it easier for South Korean companies to send
their staff to work in the United States.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau also plans to visit
Seoul this weekend.
Calls for fixes to the US visa system
Hyundai’s “desire to get this thing up and running as quickly as
possible ran head-on into the often time-consuming processes that
the U.S. government requires in order to issue business visas,” said
Branstetter of Carnegie Mellon.
U.S. authorities say those detained were “unlawfully working” at the
plant. Charles Kuck, a lawyer representing several of the South
Koreans who were detained, said the “vast majority” of the workers
from South Korea were doing work authorized under a visa program.
Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy
program at the Migration Policy Institute, said work visas — like
nearly all other aspects of the U.S. immigration system — need
reform.
“Our visa system does not envision this kind of scenario,” Gelatt
said, of bringing in skilled foreign workers needed for the initial
setup of factories. The U.S. has a few country-specific visa
categories that make it easier to bring in certain foreign workers,
like those from Mexico, Australia or Singapore.
“The goal,” said MIT's Armstrong, “should be to make foreign direct
investment as streamlined as possible.”
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
