You may recall the story of how in 2020 Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, an ally of Gov. Kemp, refused to illegally change a few thousand votes to give Trump the state. Kemp broke with Trump and defeated a Trump-backed candidate in the 2022 gubernatorial primary, then beat Stacey Abrams in the general election. He is, then, a leader, if only de facto, of the anti-Trump office holding wing of the Republican Party.
Georgia has been seeking out foreign investment for years, and has also been active in the EV space. That’s not a partisan effort; it’s smart business. So Hyundai’s EV factory near Black Creek was a big win for the state. But Trump hates EVs. He hates batteries. And he hates Brian Kemp.
What I haven’t heard in the mainstream media coverage of the ICE raid on the Hyundai-LG factory was any connection between the raid and Trump’s hatreds. But it seems pretty clear. If ICE did not think that the plant’s visiting workers were there properly, they could have simply talked to management and asked the workers to leave. That would have been normal. The workers had, after all, arrived legally. The only question was whether the work they were doing fit the rules. They had no criminal intent.
Yet ICE rounded them up like dangerous desperadoes, handcuffed and chained, then jailed until they were thrown onto a plane. They were sending a message. That of course has hurt our relations with South Korea, and also hurt Georgia’s business. It would not surprise me if completion of that plant were cancelled or at least postponed until a saner administration takes Trump’s place. And that’s probably Trump’s intent. He’s showing elected officials around the country that his secret police will come for their visitors too, and wreck their businesses, if they are perceived as his enemies. And showing foreign experts that they are not welcome in the US.
Bear in mind that the “violation” was that they were doing work that was “employment”, versus proper “business trip” temporary work. The arrested Koreans were installing Korean machinery in the factory, stuff that is not made in the US and which the manufacturer normally sends its skilled people to install. Americans couldn’t do that because they don’t know how — complex machinery like that is installed by the manufacturer’s people, who also train Americans on how to use it before they leave. Perhaps that is more properly H1B than H1A or waivered visa work: H1Bs are for foreigners “employed” while H1A and waivers are for short-term work or business meetings. The quota for H1Bs for South Korea is precisely zero. So there was nothing different about this plant’s arrangement; it was how Korean investment happens. Or happened, as I doubt Koreans will be in a hurry to invest here any more.
