Last week’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at a Hyundai-linked battery plant in Georgia will reportedly delay production and construction efforts at the U.S. Hyundai facility, potentially by months, according to the company’s CEO.
On September 4, ICE raided a Hyundai-linked facility in Georgia where batteries are produced. The agency arrested hundreds of workers, many whom are South Korean.
Seeing their fellow citizens in handcuffs made waves in South Korea, and earned condemnation from the nation’s president.
Hyundai Motor Company’s president and CEO, José Muñoz, told Axios that it would not change its plans for investment into the U.S., but that it will delay its battery production.
“The U.S. is strategically important for the mid- to long-term, and our plans of investment continue, okay? But it’s something that needs to be resolved to be able to go fast,” he told the outlet.
During an event on Thursday in Detroit, Muñoz explained to reporters what delays might be on the horizon.
“This is going to give us minimum two to three months delay, because now all these people want to get back,” Muñoz told reporters on Thursday. “Then you need to see how can you fill those positions. And for the most part, those people are not in the U.S.”
U.S. officials reached a deal with South Korea to release its more than 300 detained workers into the nation’s custody. The workers were due to be flown home on a charter flight.
Muñoz noted that “almost all battery companies operating in the U.S. are Korean,” and said that finding people with the knowledge to work in the facility may take some time. He said his three month estimation was based on an assumption that “some people will be able to come back and help” because “the knowledge is not here.”
“Our company does a lot of things. We don’t build batteries, right? So this is not our knowledge, and then they have it in in Korea. They specialize,” he said.
President Donald Trump reportedly tried to convince some of the South Korean workers detained in the raid to stay in the U.S. and train American workers, according to officials in Seoul.
Trump reportedly “emphasized that the detained Korean nationals were skilled workers and suggested they either remain in the U.S. to contribute to training the American workforce or be returned to South Korea, depending on Seoul’s stance,” according to the Financial Times, citing a South Korean official.
The workers were reportedly exhausted and shocked by their detainment and instead opted to return home to South Korea, according to officials.
South Korea’s foreign minister, Cho Hyun, said that South Koreans were “hurt and shocked” by the images of their countrymen being shackled, seeing them as workers “who came to the U.S. to transfer technology and knowhow to contribute to the Trump administration’s efforts to revive the U.S. manufacturing industry”.
The Georgia facility was intended to create approximately 40,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to the company.
