Donald Trump has told foreign companies operating in the U.S. to hire and train Americans after hundreds of South Korean workers were arrested by immigration officials at a Hyundai site in Georgia.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on Thursday descended on the South Korean automaker’s sprawling manufacturing facility near Savannah in the largest single-site enforcement operation in the Department of Homeland Security’s history.
As the Trump administration escalated its immigration crackdown, the president issued a veiled threat on Sunday, urging foreign companies to “respect our nation’s immigration laws.”
“Following the Immigration Enforcement Operation on the Hyundai Battery Plant in Georgia, I am hereby calling on all Foreign Companies investing in the United States to please respect our Nation’s Immigration Laws,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Your Investments are welcome, and we encourage you to LEGALLY bring your very smart people, with great technical talent, to build World Class products, and we will make it quickly and legally possible for you to do so.
“What we ask in return is that you hire and train American Workers.”
The operation marked the latest in a string of workplace immigration raids enforced by the Trump administration and threatened to derail relations between Washington and Seoul.
The move came just months after South Korea agreed in July to purchase $100 billion in U.S. energy and make a $350 billion investment in the nation in return for lower tariff rates – which was touted as one of Georgia’s largest economic development projects.
A majority of the 475 workers arrested at the still-under-construction plant, intended to produce batteries for electric vehicles, were South Korean nationals, ICE said on Friday. Some were filmed in handcuffs and ankle chains being loaded onto buses.
The South Korean government announced Sunday that more than 300 detained Hyandui workers would be released and brought back home by charter plane. Kang Hoon-sik, chief of staff for President Lee Jae Myung, confirmed that negotiations with the U.S. for the release had been finalized.
Most of the people detained were taken to an immigration detention center in Folkston near the Georgia-Florida state line, Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of Homeland Security Investigations, said in a news conference Friday.
Schrank said that some of the detainees had illegally crossed the U.S. border. Others, he said, had entered the country legally but their visas had since expired visas or they had entered on a visa waiver that prohibited them from working.
None had been charged with any crimes, Schrank added.
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said over the weekend that he was “deeply concerned” by the detentions and had planned to fly to the U.S. on Monday.
Trump appeared to soften his rheotric Sunday evening, telling reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland that the U.S. and South Korea could work out an agreement for its nationals to “come in and train our people” to do battery and computer manufactoring work.
