Posted on 10/27/2025 8:04:47 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
President Donald Trump said Monday he was “very much opposed” to the immigration raid at a Hyundai electric vehicle plant in Georgia last month after an operation that saw hundreds of South Korean workers detained and sent home.
Nearly 500 employees were arrested during the Sept. 4 raid at Hyundai Motor Group’s facility in Ellabell, Georgia. Workers were sat on the factory floor as officers shackled their legs in scenes that caused outrage in South Korea, where the government scrambled to secure the workers’ release. They were eventually flown home on a chartered flight after urgent negotiations.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Japan, the first stop on his Asia trip, Trump said he didn’t agree with how the situation at the plant was handled.
“You know how I feel, I was very much opposed,” the president said.
He continued:
"Look, when they come in and they’re making very complex machinery, equipment, they’re going to have to bring some people in, at least at the initial phase. In that case, it was batteries. Batteries are very complex and they’re actually very dangerous to make. You can’t just pick people off an unemployment line and say, 'We just, you know, opened up a $2 billion battery factory.' So, we’ve got an understanding, and this is with the world, by the way. This is not just – this is when they come into our country, we have a lot of factories being built by outside by foreign interests."
Trump argued that foreign investors should be allowed to “bring in experts” to help establish U.S. operations:
"When they come in, some of these factories make very, very complex, very highly sophisticated equipment. They’ve got to bring people in with them for a period of time. They’ll teach our people how to do it, but even for a fairly long period of time, they’re going to need expertise to be successful. And we’re going to let people know. I’m letting them know right now that when they come into our country, we can expect to see them bring in with them some very talented people that have been doing it for many years. They’ll teach our people how to do it. Our people will be just as good as they are within a period of time and it’ll be a phase out, but we want them to bring in experts and that’s the way it is."
After a reporter followed up that his administration was doing a “whole new” visa plan, Trump said:
"I was opposed to getting them out and in fact before they got out they were pretty well set but before they got out I said they could say they went they left and they’re going to be coming back."
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung warned after the raid that confusion over visa rules may chill investment.
“Whether they should go at all,” Lee said, was now a question some firms were asking.
They cannot build a car worth a damn.
You get a budget priced heap of plastic that costs as much as a bmw in repairs...
“If we want foreign investment in American job creation, we’d better streamline the visa process.”
Technical manuals are typed up on computers, not typewriters.
Automatic translation is pretty good nowadays.
THAT IS THE “MISSING LINK” IN THE INFORMATION
That amplifies what I was saying. There were so many batter ways to handle this.
Lest we forget: the raid took place on September 4. On September 12, more than 300 Korean workers returned back to South Korea on a chartered Korean Air jet. President Trump had delayed the departure by a day to allow the workers to decide whether to stay, but only one chose to stay.
Even a month ago, President Trump showed he wasn’t on board with the draconian raid.
This was a big mistake on the part of the Trump Administration
These workers were skilled technicians brought in to help out with tech transfer in a key technology to get a new American factory online
How this happened is beyond me.
“If we want foreign investment in American job creation, we’d better streamline the visa process.”
I suspect CNC machines can be programmed remotely.
That’s your opinion. Don’t buy one if you don’t want one. Lots of Americans do.
More important than your or my personal auto preferences is that Hyundai was set to spend $4.7 billion on a plant that would add over 3000 permanent American jobs.
That's complete and total BS. It's impossible that all 475 of those detailed and deported were "experts." They were Korean assembly line workers snuck into the U.S. illegally by the company. And that plant had been built on the promise that it would provide hundreds of "well-paying" jobs for the locals. That was BS too.
Multi-national companies use big law firms to ensure compliance with the laws in the countries they do business in.
Kamala’s husband pulled down about $2 million/year.
I think that a lot of law enforcement bureaucrats thought that it would boost their careers to make a high-profile bust.
WHat does your racist post have to do with whether the raid was legally done and Trump’s seeming back pedaling on immigration enforcement?
Absurd. They were not apprehended on an assembly line.
Consider the source...
Dealing with problems with a huge multinational company like Hyundai is much,*much* different than dealing with an apartment building housing 100 Guatemalan fentanyl dealers.
Trump is trying to use tariffs to spur more foreign investment in manufacturing in the U.S, manufacturing in the U.S. which builds domestic employment, domestic job skills, and over time some transference of those things to U.S. owned companies. But, he is in part ignoring that no countries in the world have invested more in manufacturing in the U.S. than Japan and South Korea - hundreds of billion$.
[And, does foreign investment in manufacturing help domestic economic and industrial matters and eventually domestic manufacturers? Yes. A case in point: Multiple foreign companies set up motorcycle manufacturing in Thailand beginning some years ago, making Thailand a motorcycle manufacturing hub in Asia. Thailand now sports its own domestic motorcycle companies and of high quality. Thai workers and engineers honed their skills with foreign manufacturers and eventually built motorcycle companies of their own.]
America First, right?
“ICE’s first step should have been to contact a senior executive at Hyundai and/or a senior Korean diplomat to try to fix things.”
YES!
The Chinese have built thousands of modern factories. Almost all the work was done by Chinese.
I guess you don’t know that all the BMW and Daimler-Benz and Toyota factories in the US were set up by foreign workers.
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