President Trump on Sunday called on foreign companies investing in the United State to respect the country’s immigration laws after a raid at a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Georgia led to arrests of South Korean citizens sent to the plant to construct it.
The strange story in Ellabell, Ga., quickly became an international incident after South Korea reached a deal with the Trump administration to free hundreds of its citizens. South Korea President Lee Jae Myung said he would be sending a charter plane to bring back his country’s citizens.
The South Korean workers at the plant appeared to be caught up in two separate Trump narratives: the president’s efforts to forcibly crack down on immigration and his efforts to leverage trade to get foreign trading partners to make huge investments in the U.S.
In this case, the South Korean workers who were detained were there to help build the plant, and Trump in his remarks threaded the needle of welcoming the investments while insisting immigration laws had to be respected.
“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“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. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Earlier, Trump had also responded to questions from reporters about the incident after returning to Joint Base Andrews after a trip to the U.S. Open in New York.
Trump said he would be speaking to South Korean officials, and he insisted relations with that ally were strong despite the anger the arrests provoked in South Korea.
Trump suggested foreign companies needed to train U.S. people at factories they were building in the U.S.
“And you know, when they’re building batteries, if you don’t have people in this country right now that know about batteries, maybe we should help them along and let some people come in and train our people to do, you know, complex things, whether it’s battery manufacturing or computer manufacturing or building ships,” he said.
“So we’re going to look at that whole situation.”
He said the way you train people is to bring people in that can do the training and “let them stay for a little while and help.”
Trump called the whole situation “interesting” and defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the raid, saying they were doing “right” because the South Korean workers had been in the U.S. “illegally.”
“But we do have to work something out where we bring in experts so that our people can be trained so that they can do it themselves. Does that make sense?”
He then insisted his administration had a “great” relationship with South Korea and that “I’m going to look at it because I understand exactly what they’re saying.”
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