Weekly Briefing — Hyundai ICE Raid and the View From Asia

Sept. 14, 2025 | Browser: v33i11 | Subscribe

This issue of the Global Atlanta Weekly Briefing is sponsored by Miller & Martin

Hyundai Immigration Raid: The View From Asia

When I was traveling in Hyderabad, India, a few years ago, I was surprised to see an Atlanta story on the front page of the local newspaper.

The headline: International students from Telangana were being sent home for violating student visa rules. Across the world, about as far as I could get from home, Atlanta was featuring in the daily lives of a city of 10 million.

I felt a similar sensation this week, only scaled up, with much greater import for Georgia’s economic prospects.

As I’ve been a guest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan, a dramatic story has been unfolding back home. In case you haven’t unlocked your phone lately, 475 people were arrested in an ICE raid on the Hyundai-LG battery plant near Savannah, more than 300 of them Korean nationals (and 23 Mexicans and some Central Americans, along with a few Japanese and at least one Indonesian, it turns out).

Homeland Security said the raid was part of a broader investigation into illicit hiring practices. Attorneys with clients at the site, meanwhile, have said that at least some workers were Korean and Japanese engineers who held a status allowing them to commission complex machinery to help get the plant up and running.

Either way, these contractors — none of which worked directly for Hyundai — were rounded up, chained, and sent to a Georgia detention center to wait out the week. After a week in limbo, high-level Korean diplomatic intervention got them home on a charter jet Friday.

Needless to say, the raids directed by President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security have caused a stir. U.S. officials say they welcome foreign investment, especially Korean firms that have committed $150 billion more in recent weeks on top of their already considerable investment stock. But for some Koreans, those words rang hollow as scenes of shackled compatriots flashed across their screens.

When I turned on the TV in my hotel in Taipei, news reports in Chinese were focused on, of all things, the developing situation in Georgia. This wasn’t a feature on the No. 1 state for business; it was a look at ground-zero for the largest-ever enforcement action from an administration that has made ramping up deportations an explicit policy. I flipped to a Korean news channel, and pundits were giving their views in English on the intricacies of U.S. visa law.

Immediately, three questions came to mind:

With the world taking note, what fallout can be expected from this episode, both for existing Korean projects and future investments? Georgia has another $5 billion Korean battery plant in the works, also involving Hyundai and SK Battery, which built the original EV battery plant in Commerce. And just last week, another strategic Korean project picked Columbus, Ga., for a $223 million rare earth magnet plant. Are these projects in jeopardy?
How would Georgia’s political leaders respond? Gov. Brian Kemp famously ran an ad about rounding up illegals in his pickup truck. How would he reconcile this sentiment, and his support for Mr. Trump’s agenda, with the need to show solidarity with investors who have bet billions on the state?
What might this mean for Taiwan? TSMC, the semiconductor giant, has spent $12 billion already in Arizona and plans to scale up to $165 billion in investment across six chip fabs. Does Taiwan’s government worry about its corporate crown jewel being affected by future such enforcement actions?

A prominent investment banker who had just written a column on the topic the day before told me that Taiwanese companies are watching this closely as they are being asked (as part of trade negotiations, like Korea) to invest more heavily in the United States. In an interview with Global Atlanta, Deputy Foreign Minister François Chihchung Wu downplayed any similarities between Taiwanese and Korean investment trends in the U.S.

But for now, the view from Asia seems, at least temporarily, to show a bad look for Georgia.

Read: Georgia moves to shore up Korea ties as Hyundai takes stock after ICE raid