South Korea: 'many' of its nationals detained in ICE raid on GA Hyundai facility

Raid context and visa / status confusion

• The facility is a large Hyundai battery “metaplant” still under construction; many of those detained were South Korean nationals, reportedly engineers and managers.
• Commenters debate whether these workers were on valid visas or visa waivers:
  • Some argue the ESTA/visa‑waiver rules clearly allow short business visits (meetings, inspections, consulting) but not “active employment,” making the line blurry.
  • Others note ICE/CBP often misinterpret status, conflate “work” vs “business,” or punish people for saying they “live” in the US even on valid non‑immigrant visas.
• ICE and CBP are described as having broad discretion at the border, with a history of detaining even US citizens and misunderstanding more complex visa types (e.g., fiancé visas, dual‑intent categories).

Effects on foreign investment and site safety

• Several predict this will chill foreign manufacturing investment (Hyundai, TSMC, similar greenfield projects) if skilled foreign staff risk detention.
• Others point to Hyundai’s prior US child‑labor scandal and extensive OSHA investigations and fatalities at this construction site; they speculate poor subcontractor practices and undocumented labor may have triggered the raid.

Immigration enforcement, racism, and incentives

• Many see the raid as political theater to meet deportation targets, driven by racialized anti‑immigrant rhetoric and aimed at creating a “reign of terror” rather than coherent policy.
• Others insist work authorization must be enforced uniformly and blame companies for lax compliance or low‑quality visa vendors.
• A long subthread disputes whether ICE is just incompetent or structurally incentivized (quotas, bonuses) to maximize detentions, regardless of legality.

Global trust, tech sovereignty, and US political decay

• Non‑US commenters say this episode reinforces the sense that the US is “closed for business” and politically unreliable, accelerating EU interest in sovereign clouds and non‑US vendors, despite weak local alternatives.
• There is extensive debate over whether the US can “bounce back” from the current administration:
  • Some compare this to early stages of Roman Republic decline or coordinated authoritarian projects.
  • Others argue US institutions and public short‑term memory make long‑term damage less certain, though norms and checks have clearly eroded.

Labor, wages, and accountability

• Several note the pattern: undocumented or mis‑documented workers are punished, while US managers and owners who hire and exploit them (sometimes even minors) rarely face serious consequences.
• There is tension between the goal of onshoring manufacturing “for Americans” and the practical reliance on foreign expertise and underpaid, precarious workers to build and run these plants.