When Hyundai Motor Group announced its sprawling electric vehicle plant near Savannah, Georgia, in 2022, it set ambitious timelines to get the multibillion-dollar factory and all its components up and running.

The vehicle assembly lines have been humming since last October. The adjacent battery factory, a joint venture between Hyundai and Korean conglomerate LG Energy Solutions, is under construction.

But long before immigration agents last week raided the battery plant and detained nearly 500 workers, sparking international headlines, Korean companies have faced persistent issues getting visas for workers with technical knowledge who are vital to getting the facilities up and running, industry and diplomatic experts say.

Well before the raid, companies expanding in Georgia reported challenges with bringing in expertise from other countries because of delays in getting foreign visas, Jae Kim, president of the Southeast U.S. Korean Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in July.

Kim said then that the process was making it difficult for Korean companies like Hyundai and SK Battery to ramp up manufacturing plants in Georgia.

“We really want the U.S. Southeast manufacturing boom to happen,” Kim said. “Hopefully the U.S.-Korea trade relationship doesn’t become a hurdle.”

And, he said, Korean firms were also struggling to bring in expertise from their companies to train people to work at their manufacturing plants in the Southeast with the use of automation, robotics and advanced technology.

“When we have professionals in Korea trying to come and educate, transfer knowledge and sometimes even set up the plant so it can even operate, I think we’ve seen more instances of hardship of getting visas or getting interview dates with the U.S. embassy,” Kim said in July. “That’s a challenge I’ve seen a lot. I’m for the right immigration policy, but if people are doing the right thing, we should make it faster and get them here so they can work on plants and potentially do economic development here.”

Those arrested Thursday included immigrants who crossed the border illegally, others who overstayed visas, and those who had entered the country through a visa waiver program that allows foreign nationals to travel to the U.S. without a visa, according to Steven Schrank, special agent in charge of HSI Atlanta.

Of the people detained, 47 were affiliated with LG Energy Solution, according to the company. The LG employees arrested were helping oversee the factory’s construction, and had arrived in the United States with visas or under a visa waiver program, the New York Times reported, citing industry officials familiar with the project.

Some of the detainees are expected to fly back to Korea this week. Korean Air said it plans to operate a charter flight to Atlanta on Wednesday using a Boeing 747.

‘A partner to Korea’

There are few official details about how the investigation into the Hyundai facility began, how the 475 people were identified for arrest and what their status was.

A search warrant shows that there were four people originally designated as “target persons” in the raid: Andreina Fuentes-Tovar, Kevin Zavaleta-Ramirez, David Zavaleta-Ramirez and Julio Gonzalez Alvarado.

The warrant also sought employment records for employees at the site and immigration documents including visas and work authorization.

Some in the Korean community characterize the raid as a betrayal of the partnership forged by locating the Hyundai Metaplant in the region.

Sarah Park with the Korean American Coalition at a press event Monday called the project a “symbol of economic growth and international cooperation” that required highly specialized subcontractors and technicians in the construction and setup phase.

The Georgia Department of Economic Development in a statement Monday said, “Georgia has been a partner to Korea for decades with 40 years of representation in the country, and nothing about that has changed.”

“We remain in touch with Korean companies that are already operating in Georgia and prospective partners,” according to a statement from spokeswoman Marie Gordon. “We have very strong relationships that allow us to maintain conversations with companies throughout their life cycle. At the same time, the Department of Economic Development expects anyone doing business in Georgia to follow federal and state laws.”

Georgia is not the only state trying to attract more Korean investment. There are more than a dozen state agencies that are represented in the Association of American State Offices in Korea, including Georgia as well as Arizona, Arkansas, Maryland, New Jersey, Indiana, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington.

Thomas Byrne, president and CEO of the Korea Society, an organization to promote cooperation between the U.S. and Korea, said the initial reaction of Korean business leaders was “shock.”

“Now the shock may have turned to anger,” Byrne said. “They don’t feel supported.”

South Korea in July pledged $350 billion in investment in the U.S. in its deal for lower tariffs.

“Everyone knew there was a problem with the visa regime,” that there isn’t a realistic allotment of H-1B visas or other visas for Koreans to do the work needed, he said.

But “the issue of how to ramp up construction and production as quickly as possible, without sorting out an antiquated visa regime, just wasn’t considered by either administration,” Byrne said. “This has always been a concern that members of Congress have talked about, but no one has done anything about it over the years.”

So “the new needs got way ahead of what’s happening on the ground,” he said. “They just let this situation kind of drift, and now it’s met the reality of Trump’s immigration enforcement policy.”

That means for companies considering investing abroad, the U.S. is “an investment with a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “They’re uncertain how they’re going to ramp up construction and start production really quickly, the way they’ve been doing it, and whether that’s feasible going forward.”

Trump in a social media post on Sunday evening said “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,” he said.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday she doesn’t think the detentions will deter investment in the U.S., The Associated Press reported.

“We’re encouraging all companies who want to come to the United States and help our economy and employ people, that we encourage them to employ U.S. citizens and to bring people to our country that want to follow our laws and work here the right way,” she told reporters.

But some officials in Korea expressed outrage, the Washington Post reported Monday.

“I’m really speechless and furious,” said Choi Jong-gun, former vice foreign minister, according to the Post. “We spend a lot of money in the United States and we get slapped in the face.”

Hopes for visa reform

Charles Kuck, an Atlanta immigration attorney, said he represents about a dozen people who were arrested at the site, and said all of them were here legally. Two of them came from Mexico when they were toddlers and are here under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, and others include Koreans and others who he said are in the U.S. legally on B-1 business visitor visas, he said.

“They were all engaged in activities that were consistent with the B-1 visa,” Kuck said. “One of them was here to consult on engineering part of the project. And in fact, he just arrived — that morning was his first day, and he was scheduled to leave this week.”

“The companies, both Korean and Japanese, sent over individual engineers and technicians to install and service that machinery. And that’s what they were doing,” Kuck said. “They were putting the machinery in place that would allow the plant to open and actually employ U.S. workers.”

Kuck said the machinery is designed, built and manufactured abroad, and it would take years to train people on how to install and service it, so instead skilled workers are sent over to set up the machinery.

Kuck said he believes ICE was not prepared to arrest the Koreans and had not brought a Korean interpreter, and they may have initially arrested those who weren’t citizens or green card holders.

“There is no visa that says this visa is for coming and setting up a manufacturing plant,” Kuck said. “So much like everything in immigration, it’s all about pounding square pegs into round holes.”

Rolling Stone reported Friday that Tori Branum, a firearms instructor who is a Republican candidate for Georgia’s 12th congressional district, reached out to ICE on the agency’s website after a union member told her they had discovered that undocumented immigrants were working on construction projects at the plant. Branum told Rolling Stone an agent then contacted her.

The Hyundai plant is not unionized, and has been a target for organizing by the United Auto Workers.

The United Auto Workers on Sunday issued a statement criticizing Hyundai’s record on worker safety, while saying “the militarized federal crackdown on these workers further hurts safety at Hyundai.”

Byrne with the Korea Society said he hopes Trump’s comments about making it quickly and legally possible to bring over talent means “maybe some good will come out of this very unfortunate event, and the U.S. will accelerate updating the visa regime.”

(Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Adam Van Brimmer contributed to this article.)

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