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South Korean workers detained in Hyundai plant raid to be freed and flown home

106 points by MilnerRoute 1y ago

ajross 1y ago
Isn't "freed and flown home" the same thing as "deported"? These were routine professionals doing a job they took in good faith under rules and norms that have held for a century or more.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- metrix 1y ago
  I don't quite understand what happened other than "deported by ICE".
  - sb8244 1y ago
    The article makes it sound as if there were govt negotiations to have them sent home. It is light on details though, but with that many people of a friendly nation / corporation I imagine they get treated differently. I interpreted that to mean they may not have permanent US immigration issues vs "being deported".
    - fsckboy 1y ago
      the national debate and evolving policies wrt deportations the past year has focused on: 1. getting those with criminal records depoarted and not allowed back (a fair number of whom have been depoted and have violated the ban on returning) 2. getting those who've wished to settle and work jobs to leave voluntarily by buying them plane tickets and giving them cash stipends and not barring their reentry in the future These Koreans who came to Georgia on behalf of their company will probably not have their tickets paid for by the US nor get the stipend, so yes, they are treated differently as you suggest. after the surprise arrests executing the judicial warrant, the Korean company and government stepped forward and expressed a commitment to helping these workers, which occurred without negotiation, although you could call the flurry of phone calls after that negotiations, it was probably more like "Q; what do we need to do" "A: you need to bring them home". neither country nor the companies involved is looking to disturb relations, though perhaps this is adjacent to a tariff negotiation.
      - notpachet 1y ago
        > 2. getting those who've wished to settle and work jobs to leave voluntarily by buying them plane tickets and not barring their reentry in the future If you think the current administration is giving cash stipends to anyone it's been working to deport as part of its dragnet, I have a very large bridge to sell you.
        fsckboy 1y ago
        it's a real policy (it's an app), provide a link if you have a source that says it's not, otherwise you're just unproductively snarking. it's certainly cost effective, a few thousand voluntary is much cheaper than administrative means.
        notpachet 1y ago
        I have friends who've been deported without criminal records. They didn't get paid anything. I don't know what you're talking about. I'll repeat what I said: > If you think the current administration is giving cash stipends to anyone it's been working to deport as part of its dragnet What policy or app says "when ICE deports people, give them a stipend" ? Edit: Here's the ICE manual on how deportations are conducted[1]. There's no mention of cash payouts. [1] https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/dro_policy_memos/09684drofieldpolicymanual.pdf https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/dro_policy_memos/09684drofie...
        fsckboy 1y ago
        as I said before, the program is to volunteer to go home prior to being deported by the govt; the point is by volunteering you save the cost of deportation (agents, lawyers, court time, incarceration, transportation) so if your friends were deported before applying, then it's too late because that deportation already cost the govt money. the program is only months old, so if your friends got deported before that it wouldn't apply. you have to apply for the program (I think you just download the app and sign up) in advance, you can't just return home and then apply. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/05/dhs-announces-historic-travel-assistance-and-stipend-voluntary-self-deportation https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/05/dhs-announces-historic-t... https://www.ice.gov/self-deportation https://www.ice.gov/self-deportation
- gruez 1y ago
  >Federal and immigration agents arrested 475 people on Thursday — mostly South Korean nationals — while executing a judicial search warrant as part of a criminal investigation into alleged unlawful employment at the facility. > ... >South Korea will “push forward measures to review and improve the residency status and visa system for personnel travelling to the United States.” The implication seems to be that the workers didn't have authorization to work there.
  - ajross 1y ago
    > The implication seems to be that the workers didn't have authorization to work there. No one ever does, by that standard. In the US, if you're a professional coming in to do some short-term thing, there's no visa process. You just fly in and get the stamp in your passport, which is technically treated as a "waiver of visa". Then you do your job and go home. Like, have you every flown somewhere to attend a conference and a meeting? Same thing. Where's the "authorization"?
    - gruez 1y ago
      >Like, have you every flown somewhere to attend a conference and a meeting? Same thing. Where's the "authorization"? Something tells me that working at a factory, even for "training" purposes is very different than attending a conference. Wikipedia confirms this: >There are restrictions on the type of employment-related activities allowed. Meetings and conferences in relation to the travelers' profession, line of business or employer in their home country are generally acceptable, but most forms of "gainful employment" are not. There are however poorly-classifiable exceptions such as persons performing professional services in the United States for a non-U.S. employer, and persons installing, servicing and repairing commercial or industrial equipment or machinery pursuant to a contract of sale.[26] Performers (such as actors and musicians) who plan on performing live or taping scenes for productions in their country of origin, as well as athletes participating in an athletic event, are likewise not allowed to use the VWP for their respective engagements and are instead required to have an O or P visa prior to arrival. Foreign media representatives and journalists on assignment are required to have a nonimmigrant media (I) visa.[27]
- joezydeco 1y ago
  The one detail I can't seem to find anywhere was what type of visa these SK nationals used to enter the US, and if they overstayed. This isn't exactly new territory. A lot of countries are very careful to avoid letting you in on a tourist visa if you give off the appearance of entering to work.
  - ajross 1y ago
    > The one detail I can't seem to find anywhere was what type of visa these SK nationals used to enter the US, and if they overstayed. Because there is no visa process for short term professional work in the US, and never has been. > A lot of countries are very careful to avoid letting you in on a tourist visa if you give off the appearance of entering to work. That's just wrong. Virtually the entirety of the professional world travels around between industrial countries on tourist visas. Otherwise anyone going to a trade show is an "illegal" at risk of deportation.
    - detaro 1y ago
      There's work and work. Most "tourist" visa will cover things like attending conferences or tradeshows, meetings with a different branch of your employer or customers etc, but on the other side more dedicated work, conference talks you are compensated for, ... can quickly be treated differently. And if you don't come from a preferred part of the world even the former can quickly be quite a process to prove it.
      - ghaff 1y ago
        Exactly. Being nervous, of a "suspicious" ethnicity, giving any indication that you're being paid for being in the country, can probably all lead to issues. As I wrote elsewhere, aside from some countries that require a visa for any explicit business activity, a basic visa is typically fine to go to a conference or meet with a customer, much less send some emails.
    - ehnto 1y ago
      That is my impression of travelling to the US right now. Non zero risk of baseless detainment and deportation, and a non zero risk of being sent to a different country than the one you live in. No thanks. I'll stream the conference online.
- rayiner 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - philwelch 1y ago
    This is one of many issues that people are disingenuous about. They just want open borders even if it means ignoring the law and the preferences of the American people.
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    > Where are the goalposts? Are you suggesting that some people found to be working illegally shouldn’t be deported? H1-B reform should be table stakes and simple for this administration to tackle, since they “don’t give a shit” (a direct quote from VPOTUS) about laws and the legislative process. If the administration actually cared about making it easier for foreign companies to invest in domestic production capacity, they could accomplish it overnight.
    - cmxch 1y ago
      Remove the entire program root and stem by repealing the 1965 Immigration Act and all its provisions. Then create a system that makes it unprofitable to body shop out US citizens and compensates those that have been.
  - dtjb 1y ago
    Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers? Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty. We're punishing people who are part of the workforce contributing to our country's economic output. Seems like the real question is, what do we get out of this? Because it doesn't appear to be aligned with security or prosperity. It's just needless suffering, bureaucracy, and wasted resources.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers? Deterring irregular economic migration? If the government adopts a non-formal policy of not prosecuting non-criminal non-violent workers, it's implicitly saying it's fine to people to violate immigration laws and come here to work, as long as you don't cause trouble. You might think this is fine because free movement of labor is good or whatever, but that's not what most Americans want.
- skybrian 1y ago
  Yes, but it still seems like relatively good news for temporary workers who have a home in a safe country to go back to. We’re not talking about Haiti.
- wombatpm 1y ago
  This administration is taking people who dutifully show up for court hearings as part of their asylum claims and shipping them back to their country of origin. To make it worse, they are sending their confidential asylum paperwork to the country directly. The South Koreans are lucky they are being sent to the correct Korea.
- Discordian93 1y ago
  "Deported" now seems to be an euphemism for being sent to a concentration camp in a random third world country, so I guess they have to use different language for actual deportations.
- treetalker 1y ago
  Before IIRIRA in 1996, US immigration law had separate processes for deportation and exclusion. Since then, we have a single, unified process called removal. So technically deportation no longer exists. It is more proper to say that someone is being removed.
- eunos 1y ago
  It's a bit different since they "srlf-deport" before the government formally deport them. That mean they are not banned from coming to the US next time.
- dfxm12 1y ago
  "Deported" has several meanings, especially in recent context for deportees from the USA. One can be deported to a detention facility in a country one has no ties to, for example. This unfortunately has happened often enough that it is important to distinguish exactly which flavor of deportation is happening...
  - rayiner 1y ago
    [flagged]
neom 1y ago
Related to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45139954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45139954
tibbydudeza 1y ago
They were LG Chem workers to set up the battery manufacturing plant at the Hyundai facility - the paperwork was not filed correctly - LG probably did this a few times already as practice - the workers are in a compound situation and don't interact with the locals. Somebody snitched no doubt.
- Shank 1y ago
  Do you have any information about this happening in the past, or the "compound situation" etc?
  - tibbydudeza 1y ago
    It is normal practice for workers brought in to start up a new production line. Chinese workers come in and they barely speak English, and they are kept together at a hotel or at a rental home (compound) with a translator/minder and a local guide to make sure they don't wonder off on their own and get into sticky situations (kidnapped or law enforcement or unsanctioned visits to bars or the local girls).
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  Seems like the sort of thing our administration really wants to discourage, right? Definitely should deport those folks trying to... move manufacturing to America.
- eunos 1y ago
  There's a Georgian TikTok user that is claimed snitching them. Heard also that she's running for office.
- cmxch 1y ago
  [flagged]
- phendrenad2 1y ago
  > the paperwork was not filed correctly Is that an euphemism for "the paperwork was not filed AT ALL ON PURPOSE"?
nemo44x 1y ago
I’m guessing they were here on a business/consulting visa and doing more than that but it’s probably been de facto practice for years and hasn’t had issues. And I’m guessing the majority of them have skills in setting a factory up that are difficult to source locally.
- givemeethekeys 1y ago
  Yeah, it would take a while to train the locals to speak Korean.
  - nemo44x 1y ago
    Indeed. Likely just a pragmatic thing here that’s always worked. Will likely end up with a new special kind of very short term visa to cover this sort of thing.
    - nasmorn 1y ago
      Maybe your government is also jeopardizing FDI for some political grandstanding. Then no new visa is needed. Growth simply goes down and less people have health care. Problem solved
    - givemeethekeys 1y ago
      I sure hope not. If they want to do business here, then they should be forced to hire here and train as needed and that includes teaching people their preferred ways of communicating.
      - HDThoreaun 1y ago
        > If they want to do business here Ok then they wont do business here.
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        If we flipped that on US companies operating in Europe then there would be many cries of murder.
SanjayMehta 1y ago
It’s a language issue. When I first started travelling to the US, I was carefully coached by US HR and Legal to say I was on “business” as in meetings, and not “work.” I suspect the subtle difference was not understood by the Koreans. A shoddy way and shortsighted to deal with companies which are investing in your country.
- bitcurious 1y ago
  > I suspect the subtle difference was not understood by the Koreans. Why would you suspect that a company flying in hundreds of laborers can’t afford a lawyer to give the same guidance your HR company gave? It’s tax evasion and cost cutting.
  - SanjayMehta 1y ago
    Experts setting up machines are not “labour.”
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    When I was much younger I was sent 'onsite' regularly to set up machinery that had been made by the company I worked for. This is still pretty common in anything related to industry because you're just simply not going to be able to train a local to troubleshoot/install a machine that they have no clue about. Some of this stuff takes years to become familiar with.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 1y ago
  >It’s a language issue. >When I first started travelling to the US, I was carefully coached by US HR and Legal to say I was on “business” as in meetings, and not “work.” Were you actually there for "meetings"? or actually doing stuff like writing reports?
givemeethekeys 1y ago
I find it amazing that theres so much sympathy towards giant Korean megacorp here. “Oh, maybe they got mixed up with the visa because language”. No they did not. “Oh, maybe it’s really difficult to find local talent”. No it isn’t. Not for them. There are many advantages for them to illegally fly in a whole Workforce. That is why they did it. “
- rich_sasha 1y ago
  I haven't been following the story closely, but it is clear the Korean workers broke visa rules? Or do they just look a bit foreign and talk funny? Even before Trump there were plenty of stories where ICE clearly didn't know their own country's visa rules.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    The New York Times write-up on this is pretty good: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/georgia-battery-plant-hyundai-lg-ice-raid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/georgia-battery-plant-.... This plant was under investigation for a significant time. Some citizens and workers with visas were initially detained, but were released once their documentation was verified. The workers being deported were not Hyundai employees, and it seems clear from the company's response that they were not working in the U.S. legally.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      https://archive.is/NfaBw https://archive.is/NfaBw
  - jchip303 1y ago
    [dead]
  - hopelite 1y ago
    I can attest that’s companies, especially large ones will generally know the rules better than the various government agencies and people, precisely because they have an incentive to know, they pay people to know, and there is risk involved. They also usually make a determination that the reward is not only greater than the risk, but greater than the consequences, and they have always been proved correct in that calculation. That especially applies to the executives, the people who immensely profit and effectively never face any, let alone effective consequences, so peoples round them also just keep their heads down and look away or even just facilitate the illegal behaviors in order to brown nose and climb the corporate ladder. It is somewhat astonishing, but it seems people are baffled when things don’t change even though consequences for corporations and executives are net positive. Why should they care when the c-suite runs off with way more money than before in the end anyways? Take for example the recent greystar lawsuit by the government for essentially price fixing apartment rents, ie fraud, across the nation. Long story short; estimates are they profited about $2.2 billion every year, the government fined them/agreed to a measly settlement paid to the government; with zero relief or compensation to those they committed their crimes against, nor will the executives that made the illegal decisions suffer any consequences, nor will there be punitive consequences that make executives sit up in attention.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
lokar 1y ago
For people saying "they should have had the right visa", no one does this. Any day of the week all of the big tech companies will have dozens of overseas engineers in the US attending meetings, and gasp working on-site (writing code, etc). They all have either tourist visas or visa waivers. And it's the same thing when the US engineers visit the remote sites in other countries. Regardless of what the letter of the law is, this has long been the practice, because it's the only workable solution and is clearly within the spirit of the law. In this case LG was fitting out a new batter factory. That is a very complex setup with highly specialized machines. The ONLY way that was ever going to happen was with LG specialists coming over to do the setup and get the line working. And it's almost certain that getting "correct" visas for all these people would have been practically impossible, and has not been the actual practice for many decades.
- general1465 1y ago
  What you are describing - going to a remote site, sort out something with client and going back - is a business meeting and that falls under visa waiver / tourist visa in any country, because the worker who is doing the job is not paid by the local company, but by his employer in his home country. With this logic it would be illegal to have a vacation and also write a code in a free time.
  - pylua 1y ago
    Ianal but my understanding is you can’t do any work , even coding, debugging, if you are in the us on a non work visa. It does not matter who is funding you. I could be wrong though. I have personally seen companies abuse this. I’m glad it’s be cracked down on.
    - lokar 1y ago
      I agree, it's probably the law (not just in the US, but most places). But, IME, it's almost universally ignored, and has to be. I've never worked in fab/manufacturing, but I assume if you buy a bunch of gear from ASML (100s of millions of $), they are going to send a team out to help set it up and get it working for you. How else could that work? Some story for advanced batteries. And a similar story for large (multi-national) tech/software companies. People need to travel back and forth between sites. Getting "work" visas for these short visits would be impractical. Why are you happy to see a crack down? How do you think this should work?
bluedino 1y ago
I like how the blame for everything gets deflected to the contracting company. Like Hyundai had no idea what was going on. Similar things happen with stuff like workplace safety. "Shouldn't that guy be strapped into that lift?" No, he's with xxxx, they don't follow any rules. You can turn them in but nobody cares.
rasz 1y ago
> freed and flown home thats called _deported_
tibbydudeza 1y ago
https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-us-georgia-raid-hyundai-24d990562f5ac20e7d3e983a77a4f7ff https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-us-georgia-raid-hyund... The battery plant is not up and running :).

106 points by MilnerRoute 1y ago

Isn't "freed and flown home" the same thing as "deported"? These were routine professionals doing a job they took in good faith under rules and norms that have held for a century or more.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
metrix 1y ago
I don't quite understand what happened other than "deported by ICE".
- sb8244 1y ago
  The article makes it sound as if there were govt negotiations to have them sent home. It is light on details though, but with that many people of a friendly nation / corporation I imagine they get treated differently. I interpreted that to mean they may not have permanent US immigration issues vs "being deported".
  - fsckboy 1y ago
    the national debate and evolving policies wrt deportations the past year has focused on: 1. getting those with criminal records depoarted and not allowed back (a fair number of whom have been depoted and have violated the ban on returning) 2. getting those who've wished to settle and work jobs to leave voluntarily by buying them plane tickets and giving them cash stipends and not barring their reentry in the future These Koreans who came to Georgia on behalf of their company will probably not have their tickets paid for by the US nor get the stipend, so yes, they are treated differently as you suggest. after the surprise arrests executing the judicial warrant, the Korean company and government stepped forward and expressed a commitment to helping these workers, which occurred without negotiation, although you could call the flurry of phone calls after that negotiations, it was probably more like "Q; what do we need to do" "A: you need to bring them home". neither country nor the companies involved is looking to disturb relations, though perhaps this is adjacent to a tariff negotiation.
    - notpachet 1y ago
      > 2. getting those who've wished to settle and work jobs to leave voluntarily by buying them plane tickets and not barring their reentry in the future If you think the current administration is giving cash stipends to anyone it's been working to deport as part of its dragnet, I have a very large bridge to sell you.
      - fsckboy 1y ago
        it's a real policy (it's an app), provide a link if you have a source that says it's not, otherwise you're just unproductively snarking. it's certainly cost effective, a few thousand voluntary is much cheaper than administrative means.
        notpachet 1y ago
        I have friends who've been deported without criminal records. They didn't get paid anything. I don't know what you're talking about. I'll repeat what I said: > If you think the current administration is giving cash stipends to anyone it's been working to deport as part of its dragnet What policy or app says "when ICE deports people, give them a stipend" ? Edit: Here's the ICE manual on how deportations are conducted[1]. There's no mention of cash payouts. [1] https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/dro_policy_memos/09684drofieldpolicymanual.pdf https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/dro_policy_memos/09684drofie...
        fsckboy 1y ago
        as I said before, the program is to volunteer to go home prior to being deported by the govt; the point is by volunteering you save the cost of deportation (agents, lawyers, court time, incarceration, transportation) so if your friends were deported before applying, then it's too late because that deportation already cost the govt money. the program is only months old, so if your friends got deported before that it wouldn't apply. you have to apply for the program (I think you just download the app and sign up) in advance, you can't just return home and then apply. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/05/dhs-announces-historic-travel-assistance-and-stipend-voluntary-self-deportation https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/05/dhs-announces-historic-t... https://www.ice.gov/self-deportation https://www.ice.gov/self-deportation
gruez 1y ago
>Federal and immigration agents arrested 475 people on Thursday — mostly South Korean nationals — while executing a judicial search warrant as part of a criminal investigation into alleged unlawful employment at the facility. > ... >South Korea will “push forward measures to review and improve the residency status and visa system for personnel travelling to the United States.” The implication seems to be that the workers didn't have authorization to work there.
- ajross 1y ago
  > The implication seems to be that the workers didn't have authorization to work there. No one ever does, by that standard. In the US, if you're a professional coming in to do some short-term thing, there's no visa process. You just fly in and get the stamp in your passport, which is technically treated as a "waiver of visa". Then you do your job and go home. Like, have you every flown somewhere to attend a conference and a meeting? Same thing. Where's the "authorization"?
  - gruez 1y ago
    >Like, have you every flown somewhere to attend a conference and a meeting? Same thing. Where's the "authorization"? Something tells me that working at a factory, even for "training" purposes is very different than attending a conference. Wikipedia confirms this: >There are restrictions on the type of employment-related activities allowed. Meetings and conferences in relation to the travelers' profession, line of business or employer in their home country are generally acceptable, but most forms of "gainful employment" are not. There are however poorly-classifiable exceptions such as persons performing professional services in the United States for a non-U.S. employer, and persons installing, servicing and repairing commercial or industrial equipment or machinery pursuant to a contract of sale.[26] Performers (such as actors and musicians) who plan on performing live or taping scenes for productions in their country of origin, as well as athletes participating in an athletic event, are likewise not allowed to use the VWP for their respective engagements and are instead required to have an O or P visa prior to arrival. Foreign media representatives and journalists on assignment are required to have a nonimmigrant media (I) visa.[27]
joezydeco 1y ago
The one detail I can't seem to find anywhere was what type of visa these SK nationals used to enter the US, and if they overstayed. This isn't exactly new territory. A lot of countries are very careful to avoid letting you in on a tourist visa if you give off the appearance of entering to work.
- ajross 1y ago
  > The one detail I can't seem to find anywhere was what type of visa these SK nationals used to enter the US, and if they overstayed. Because there is no visa process for short term professional work in the US, and never has been. > A lot of countries are very careful to avoid letting you in on a tourist visa if you give off the appearance of entering to work. That's just wrong. Virtually the entirety of the professional world travels around between industrial countries on tourist visas. Otherwise anyone going to a trade show is an "illegal" at risk of deportation.
  - detaro 1y ago
    There's work and work. Most "tourist" visa will cover things like attending conferences or tradeshows, meetings with a different branch of your employer or customers etc, but on the other side more dedicated work, conference talks you are compensated for, ... can quickly be treated differently. And if you don't come from a preferred part of the world even the former can quickly be quite a process to prove it.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      Exactly. Being nervous, of a "suspicious" ethnicity, giving any indication that you're being paid for being in the country, can probably all lead to issues. As I wrote elsewhere, aside from some countries that require a visa for any explicit business activity, a basic visa is typically fine to go to a conference or meet with a customer, much less send some emails.
  - ehnto 1y ago
    That is my impression of travelling to the US right now. Non zero risk of baseless detainment and deportation, and a non zero risk of being sent to a different country than the one you live in. No thanks. I'll stream the conference online.
rayiner 1y ago
[flagged]
- philwelch 1y ago
  This is one of many issues that people are disingenuous about. They just want open borders even if it means ignoring the law and the preferences of the American people.
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  > Where are the goalposts? Are you suggesting that some people found to be working illegally shouldn’t be deported? H1-B reform should be table stakes and simple for this administration to tackle, since they “don’t give a shit” (a direct quote from VPOTUS) about laws and the legislative process. If the administration actually cared about making it easier for foreign companies to invest in domestic production capacity, they could accomplish it overnight.
  - cmxch 1y ago
    Remove the entire program root and stem by repealing the 1965 Immigration Act and all its provisions. Then create a system that makes it unprofitable to body shop out US citizens and compensates those that have been.
- dtjb 1y ago
  Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers? Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty. We're punishing people who are part of the workforce contributing to our country's economic output. Seems like the real question is, what do we get out of this? Because it doesn't appear to be aligned with security or prosperity. It's just needless suffering, bureaucracy, and wasted resources.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers? Deterring irregular economic migration? If the government adopts a non-formal policy of not prosecuting non-criminal non-violent workers, it's implicitly saying it's fine to people to violate immigration laws and come here to work, as long as you don't cause trouble. You might think this is fine because free movement of labor is good or whatever, but that's not what most Americans want.
skybrian 1y ago
Yes, but it still seems like relatively good news for temporary workers who have a home in a safe country to go back to. We’re not talking about Haiti.
wombatpm 1y ago
This administration is taking people who dutifully show up for court hearings as part of their asylum claims and shipping them back to their country of origin. To make it worse, they are sending their confidential asylum paperwork to the country directly. The South Koreans are lucky they are being sent to the correct Korea.
Discordian93 1y ago
"Deported" now seems to be an euphemism for being sent to a concentration camp in a random third world country, so I guess they have to use different language for actual deportations.
treetalker 1y ago
Before IIRIRA in 1996, US immigration law had separate processes for deportation and exclusion. Since then, we have a single, unified process called removal. So technically deportation no longer exists. It is more proper to say that someone is being removed.
eunos 1y ago
It's a bit different since they "srlf-deport" before the government formally deport them. That mean they are not banned from coming to the US next time.
dfxm12 1y ago
"Deported" has several meanings, especially in recent context for deportees from the USA. One can be deported to a detention facility in a country one has no ties to, for example. This unfortunately has happened often enough that it is important to distinguish exactly which flavor of deportation is happening...
- rayiner 1y ago
  [flagged]

neom 1y ago

Related to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45139954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45139954

tibbydudeza 1y ago

They were LG Chem workers to set up the battery manufacturing plant at the Hyundai facility - the paperwork was not filed correctly - LG probably did this a few times already as practice - the workers are in a compound situation and don't interact with the locals. Somebody snitched no doubt.

Shank 1y ago
Do you have any information about this happening in the past, or the "compound situation" etc?
- tibbydudeza 1y ago
  It is normal practice for workers brought in to start up a new production line. Chinese workers come in and they barely speak English, and they are kept together at a hotel or at a rental home (compound) with a translator/minder and a local guide to make sure they don't wonder off on their own and get into sticky situations (kidnapped or law enforcement or unsanctioned visits to bars or the local girls).
ocdtrekkie 1y ago
Seems like the sort of thing our administration really wants to discourage, right? Definitely should deport those folks trying to... move manufacturing to America.
eunos 1y ago
There's a Georgian TikTok user that is claimed snitching them. Heard also that she's running for office.
cmxch 1y ago
[flagged]
phendrenad2 1y ago
> the paperwork was not filed correctly Is that an euphemism for "the paperwork was not filed AT ALL ON PURPOSE"?

nemo44x 1y ago

I’m guessing they were here on a business/consulting visa and doing more than that but it’s probably been de facto practice for years and hasn’t had issues. And I’m guessing the majority of them have skills in setting a factory up that are difficult to source locally.

givemeethekeys 1y ago
Yeah, it would take a while to train the locals to speak Korean.
- nemo44x 1y ago
  Indeed. Likely just a pragmatic thing here that’s always worked. Will likely end up with a new special kind of very short term visa to cover this sort of thing.
  - nasmorn 1y ago
    Maybe your government is also jeopardizing FDI for some political grandstanding. Then no new visa is needed. Growth simply goes down and less people have health care. Problem solved
  - givemeethekeys 1y ago
    I sure hope not. If they want to do business here, then they should be forced to hire here and train as needed and that includes teaching people their preferred ways of communicating.
    - HDThoreaun 1y ago
      > If they want to do business here Ok then they wont do business here.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      If we flipped that on US companies operating in Europe then there would be many cries of murder.

SanjayMehta 1y ago

It’s a language issue. When I first started travelling to the US, I was carefully coached by US HR and Legal to say I was on “business” as in meetings, and not “work.” I suspect the subtle difference was not understood by the Koreans. A shoddy way and shortsighted to deal with companies which are investing in your country.

bitcurious 1y ago
> I suspect the subtle difference was not understood by the Koreans. Why would you suspect that a company flying in hundreds of laborers can’t afford a lawyer to give the same guidance your HR company gave? It’s tax evasion and cost cutting.
- SanjayMehta 1y ago
  Experts setting up machines are not “labour.”
  - deleted 1y ago
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- jacquesm 1y ago
  When I was much younger I was sent 'onsite' regularly to set up machinery that had been made by the company I worked for. This is still pretty common in anything related to industry because you're just simply not going to be able to train a local to troubleshoot/install a machine that they have no clue about. Some of this stuff takes years to become familiar with.
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gruez 1y ago
>It’s a language issue. >When I first started travelling to the US, I was carefully coached by US HR and Legal to say I was on “business” as in meetings, and not “work.” Were you actually there for "meetings"? or actually doing stuff like writing reports?

givemeethekeys 1y ago

I find it amazing that theres so much sympathy towards giant Korean megacorp here. “Oh, maybe they got mixed up with the visa because language”. No they did not. “Oh, maybe it’s really difficult to find local talent”. No it isn’t. Not for them. There are many advantages for them to illegally fly in a whole Workforce. That is why they did it. “

rich_sasha 1y ago
I haven't been following the story closely, but it is clear the Korean workers broke visa rules? Or do they just look a bit foreign and talk funny? Even before Trump there were plenty of stories where ICE clearly didn't know their own country's visa rules.
- rayiner 1y ago
  The New York Times write-up on this is pretty good: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/georgia-battery-plant-hyundai-lg-ice-raid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/georgia-battery-plant-.... This plant was under investigation for a significant time. Some citizens and workers with visas were initially detained, but were released once their documentation was verified. The workers being deported were not Hyundai employees, and it seems clear from the company's response that they were not working in the U.S. legally.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    https://archive.is/NfaBw https://archive.is/NfaBw
- jchip303 1y ago
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- hopelite 1y ago
  I can attest that’s companies, especially large ones will generally know the rules better than the various government agencies and people, precisely because they have an incentive to know, they pay people to know, and there is risk involved. They also usually make a determination that the reward is not only greater than the risk, but greater than the consequences, and they have always been proved correct in that calculation. That especially applies to the executives, the people who immensely profit and effectively never face any, let alone effective consequences, so peoples round them also just keep their heads down and look away or even just facilitate the illegal behaviors in order to brown nose and climb the corporate ladder. It is somewhat astonishing, but it seems people are baffled when things don’t change even though consequences for corporations and executives are net positive. Why should they care when the c-suite runs off with way more money than before in the end anyways? Take for example the recent greystar lawsuit by the government for essentially price fixing apartment rents, ie fraud, across the nation. Long story short; estimates are they profited about $2.2 billion every year, the government fined them/agreed to a measly settlement paid to the government; with zero relief or compensation to those they committed their crimes against, nor will the executives that made the illegal decisions suffer any consequences, nor will there be punitive consequences that make executives sit up in attention.

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lokar 1y ago

For people saying "they should have had the right visa", no one does this. Any day of the week all of the big tech companies will have dozens of overseas engineers in the US attending meetings, and gasp working on-site (writing code, etc). They all have either tourist visas or visa waivers. And it's the same thing when the US engineers visit the remote sites in other countries. Regardless of what the letter of the law is, this has long been the practice, because it's the only workable solution and is clearly within the spirit of the law. In this case LG was fitting out a new batter factory. That is a very complex setup with highly specialized machines. The ONLY way that was ever going to happen was with LG specialists coming over to do the setup and get the line working. And it's almost certain that getting "correct" visas for all these people would have been practically impossible, and has not been the actual practice for many decades.

general1465 1y ago
What you are describing - going to a remote site, sort out something with client and going back - is a business meeting and that falls under visa waiver / tourist visa in any country, because the worker who is doing the job is not paid by the local company, but by his employer in his home country. With this logic it would be illegal to have a vacation and also write a code in a free time.
- pylua 1y ago
  Ianal but my understanding is you can’t do any work , even coding, debugging, if you are in the us on a non work visa. It does not matter who is funding you. I could be wrong though. I have personally seen companies abuse this. I’m glad it’s be cracked down on.
  - lokar 1y ago
    I agree, it's probably the law (not just in the US, but most places). But, IME, it's almost universally ignored, and has to be. I've never worked in fab/manufacturing, but I assume if you buy a bunch of gear from ASML (100s of millions of $), they are going to send a team out to help set it up and get it working for you. How else could that work? Some story for advanced batteries. And a similar story for large (multi-national) tech/software companies. People need to travel back and forth between sites. Getting "work" visas for these short visits would be impractical. Why are you happy to see a crack down? How do you think this should work?

bluedino 1y ago

I like how the blame for everything gets deflected to the contracting company. Like Hyundai had no idea what was going on. Similar things happen with stuff like workplace safety. "Shouldn't that guy be strapped into that lift?" No, he's with xxxx, they don't follow any rules. You can turn them in but nobody cares.

rasz 1y ago

> freed and flown home thats called _deported_

tibbydudeza 1y ago

https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-us-georgia-raid-hyundai-24d990562f5ac20e7d3e983a77a4f7ff https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-us-georgia-raid-hyund... The battery plant is not up and running :).