What a joke.
I mean, it was good while it lasted.
But last, it did not.
This month, ICE and DHS raided a Hyundai EV battery plant outside of Savannah, Georgia, arresting almost 500 illegal immigrants, over 300 of which were South Korean.
If you watched the video of people attempting to flee law enforcement officers (and hilariously failing) during the recent ICE raid on the Hyundai battery plant near Savannah, Georgia, it’s possible you even laughed.
I certainly did.
It was utter pandemonium.
CNN reported that one illegal “hid in an air duct to avoid capture.” Others hid in a sewage pond and ICE agents had to “fish them out.” Some footage showed illegals running across factory and warehouse floors and climbing forklifts to evade capture.
It was imagery that perfectly captured an unspoken motto of the Trump Administration when it comes to illegal immigrants everywhere – you can run, but you can’t hide.
Bottom line: The Hyundai investment in America’s workforce was a hoax.
The raid comes after Hyundai had said in July that it would invest an additional $26 billion in the U.S. as a part of the ongoing trade negotiations that our ally South Korea is participating in as a bid to avoid tariffs.
Ever the peacemaker, President Trump commented on Truth Social, saying to South Korea that their “…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. Together, we will all work hard to make our Nation not only productive, but closer in unity than ever before.”
This entire saga sent an important message to both adversaries and allies around the world alike: The United States is an “Equal Opportunity Deporter of Illegals.”
If you break the law, we will find you and remove you from our country.
End of story.
I used to live in South Korea. I loved going to Ewha Womans University in Seoul as an exchange student, have many Korean friends, and firmly believe that South Korea is an important ally of the United States.
Sadly, that doesn’t mean there aren’t bad players in the mix of mostly good ones.
You see, the Hyundai battery plant was a Biden project that began in 2022.
The New York Times reported that the Hyundai factories in Georgia “benefited from subsidies passed by Democrats during the Biden administration…”
Biden himself claimed the new plant would contribute to American employment levels in rural Georgia by hiring 8,000 American workers. He enthusiastically said how great it was “…to announce the more than $10 billion in new investment in American manufacturing. This new commitment of $5 billion for advanced automotive technology and $5.5 billion investment to open a new factory near Savannah, Georgia, is going to create more than 8,000 new American jobs.” He also said that the factory was going to “help boost the entire community around Bryan County with good jobs people can raise a family on, and ultimately help lower costs for the American people.”
Lol.
Wanting to save face, Hyundai claimed that none of the illegal workers were actually directly employed by them, but through subcontractors.
Not their fault! They didn’t know! The company is an innocent victim of delegating work to untrustworthy people!
Yeah.
Not buying it.
The truth is that they wanted to save money.
They didn’t want to spend the billions that had been allocated for training local American workers how to do the jobs that the EV battery plant required.
It was cheaper and faster for them to pocket the money budgeted for things like training, proper wages, and health insurance and secretly import their own people.
They just used shell companies and subcontractors so they would be legally covered. Tellingly, CNN also reported that the President of the Korean American Association of Southeast Georgia James Rim, is “a builder who has hosted such workers at Airbnbs. Many, he emphasized, are single men without children in the area….” You can’t pretend you didn’t know there were illegal immigrants working at a Korean organization when the local Korean Association president was renting out AirBnBs to these same illegal immigrants.
It doesn’t matter if the country or company violating our immigration laws are our best friends or most reviled enemies.
They broke the law. That’s essentially where this story begins and ends.
It also shows a scary loophole and how bad the lies from the Biden Administration really were for those four long years.
Ever anti-American fake news, CNN tried spinning the raid as a tragedy, interviewing a local shop owner saying “Without the Koreans, I’m not making any money.”
And yes. That is a real quote.
The same Georgia store owner went on saying “On the Friday after the raid… nobody showed up for ice cream in the morning.. My workers told me … they hadn’t seen a Korean all day.”
Aww. How sad. No more illegals to sell things to!
At the end of the day, President Trump and his Administration did their job. They saw a false foreign investment in America that was built upon the lie of benefitting American workers while using American subsidiaries to bankroll it and talk their way out of tariffs – all while secretly using illegal immigrants as the real workforce.
South Korea has learned this lesson the hard way. Our ally now understands the facts are thus: we may be your friend, welcome your investments, buy your cars, and love your BBQ, but, if you’re in our country illegally, we will still arrest and deport you.
We don’t care how nice you are.
We care about the law.