President Trump appeared to show contrition yesterday over the ICE raid on 4 September that resulted in the six-day imprisonment of 317 South Koreans setting up a high-tech EV battery plant in Georgia for Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution.
He used his social media platform to post a message of praise and encouragement for foreign companies “who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other ‘things’”, saying “I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products”.
The post made no mention of illegal entry into the US, unlike his previous post on the issue as the crisis was unfolding in the early hours of Monday 8 September.
He added: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies. We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own ‘game,’ sometime into the not too distant future!”
The post came after Christopher Landau, Deputy Secretary of State, expressed “deep regrets” over the imprisonment while meeting South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo in Seoul, Yonhap News Agency reports.
Landau’s comments are the first official expression of regret for the incident that caused a diplomatic emergency just as the US and South Korea are negotiating the details of a free trade agreement.
After the raid, Homeland Security Investigations said all of the 475 workers detained had been found to be working illegally, including the 317 Koreans.
But Atlanta-based lawyer Charles Kuck, who was representing seven of the detained Koreans, told GCR that all his clients had appropriate visas for the short-term advisory and technical work they were doing to assemble the plant’s production lines.
ICE did not lay charges and the workers were released without explanation on Thursday and flew to Korea on a chartered plane.
South Korea has long pushed for adequate visa provision to match the scale of its investments in the US.
Deputy Secretary Landau acknowledged the problem in a tweet today, saying: “These are the kind of visitors we want, who are CREATING American jobs and prosperity right here at home. Korean companies are poised to make MASSIVE new investments in our country (in shipbuilding among other industries), and—as I emphasized to our Korean friends—we in the
@StateDept will ensure that they have the necessary and proper visas to comply with our laws.”
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