ICE's battery-plant raid shows need for visa reform
Workers wait to have their legs shackled at Hyundai plant in Georgia. Credit: Corey Bullard via AP
On Thursday, immigration agents arrested 475 people at a major Ellabell, Georgia, electric vehicle manufacturing complex. Most of those temporarily detained were described as South Korean nationals with special expertise who were involved in building an EV battery plant, a joint venture between Hyundai and LG.
The employees were cuffed and held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in cooperation with state authorities. They weren’t border jumpers. They were generally described as high-skilled technical workers needed to assist in developing a Korean-invested multibillion-dollar project that for three years has been enthusiastically welcomed by the United States and the state of Georgia.
According to Department of Homeland Security officials they were under investigation for months, not scooped up in a random workplace raid. Now the government in South Korea has agreed to fly them home to avoid official deportation procedures. The nation’s foreign minister was reportedly leaving for Washington Monday to secure the detainees’ release.
At issue in this mess is that proper work visas are hard to get and slow in coming from our federal bureaucracy — a problem that preceded, and is now highlighted, in the second Trump administration. Hyundai and its subcontractors have reportedly used the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, a visa waiver system for 90 days or B-1 visas. These are for short trips in and out of the country.
Trump said Friday: “They were illegal aliens and ICE was just doing its job." But he acknowledged the need for noncitizens to fill certain skilled roles. “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,” Trump posted.
More than being an embarrassment — one that jolted that area's Korean American community — the Georgia episode could signal that Hyundai's and other U.S. enterprises are vulnerable to being delayed with cost overruns.
When the details of this raid, and how it came to be, are clarified in the future, there may also turn out to have been some partisan politics involved. Tori Branum, a MAGA candidate for one of Georgia’s congressional seats next year, told Rolling Stone she reported undocumented workers at the site to DHS.
What impact she had is unknown. Also unanswered for now is the government's strategy behind these kinds of arrests — and whether they resulted from pressure by ICE officials to meet stiff quotas earlier announced by Trump aide Stephen Miller. If so, that would point up a contradiction between twin goals for the administration: building up domestic manufacturing and kicking out immigrants who are doing just that.
What does anyone gain from this particular raid? It's past time for the White House and Congress, in whatever political alignment, to devise fair and sensible immigrant work strategies. Anything else puts unnecessary restraints on America's economic development.
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