In case you missed it, on Friday ICE raided a $4.3 billion factory under construction in Ellabell, Georgia, which is jointly owned by the South Korean companies LG Energy Solution and Hyundai Motor Group and was being built to make EV batteries. It was ICE’s biggest one-time arrest-fest yet, a massive day-long event, with 475 workers, 300 of them South Korean citizens, chained up like a bunch of serial killers. Footage:
And all because, according to some conspiracy-theorist Karen from TikTok named Tori Branum — also a hopeful Republican candidate for Georgia’s 12th Congressional District — pressured them to do it, she claims! But, the factory was not taking American jobs, it was being built to make 8,500 jobs for the people Branum hopes to represent in Georgia, and the workers were contractors there to install and then train Americans to work on Korean machines. Because the instructions to set the factory up are in Korean, which your average Georgian of the 12th District does not read or speak. And they aren’t US-made machines, because the US does not have the technology!
Branum’s real proud.
Oh, and she’s got conspiracy theories, too.
Mm hm.
There is no proof that any of these people were “illegals.” Or of any dead bodies or “forensic people.”
In fact, ICE only had warrants for four people, and so far no criminal charges have been filed against anyone. And workers who were arrested at the plant said that everyone had to show proper documentation before they were hired. Their lawyer said in court Monday most have legal and proper work visas. But ICE was reportedly not interested in seeing any of their documents. The spouse of one detained worker told CNN, “Even though they were able to verify [the documentation, the detainees] were told that nothing was valid, that they would all be arrested.”
Nor is there a shred of evidence these workers were some kind of slaves living five to a room, who came here because they wanted to shop at a Walmart. As if South Korea is not a developed country! (There briefly were Walmarts in South Korea, but they all closed in 2006 because nobody wanted to shop there.)
Let’s take a walk around Seoul, why not!
But sure, lady whose closest big city is Augusta, Georgia, most famous for its golf course and swamp. At least thanks to Trump you’ve got one thing those foreign workers don’t. The power of an American QAnon Karen to make crazy stories up and get attention!
What more, the factory was being built there because Georgia Governor Brian Kemp had been begging Korean companies for years to invest and give his blue-collar workers some jerbs; he made at least two trips there since he was elected. And invest Hyundai did — while Joe Biden was president, by the way — with a new $7.6 billion electric-vehicle factory, plus the battery factory that got raided and then some, for a total of $21 billion in new investments in the US. And Korean companies collectively pledged to invest $350 billion in total so Trump wouldn’t fuck them with a tariff higher than 15 percent. (Which is already very, very high!)
And, but, then, there they were, the Korean government, having to spend all weekend and Monday scrambling to negotiate with the dead-eyed assholes in this administration in an effort to free their citizens, even sending over Foreign Minister Cho Hyun to gaze into the blank vortex of Marco Rubio’s pupils and try to talk some sense into him.
Korea now says it has an agreement to bring its citizens back home on a chartered flight on Wednesday, so at least they won’t get sent to Eswatini or El Salvador torture prison instead, for the crime of trying to teach southeast Georgians how to work robots. But the workers are all still being held, even with all their proper paperwork and a plane waiting to take them home.
Because every day is Opposite Day in fascism-land, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says that the raid was a GOOD thing that will encourage foreign investment. “This is a great opportunity for us to make sure that all companies are reassured that when you come to the United States, you’ll know what the rules of the game are.”
The first rule is there are no rules!
And Dear Leader pounded on his web platform:
Following the Immigration Enforcement Operation on the Hyundai Battery Plant in Georgia, I am hereby calling on all Foreign Companies investing in the United States to please respect our Nation’s Immigration Laws. 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. 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! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
That’s what they were doing, dingus, until Tom Homan went on a bender.
It’s easy to say that South Korea should just take their $350 billion, tell American companies good luck at building their own robots and EV batteries, and go build factories in Canada, instead. But even if they were willing to eat billions in already sunk costs, South Korea isn’t just any ally. They’re dependent on military support from the US to keep them safe from Kim Jong-un to the north. No small thing, especially lately. Kim now has closer ties to Russia than ever, after helping them out with arms and soldiers to invade Ukraine. And then over the weekend Russia and China dropped their request that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program for the first time.
And after learning that in 2019 some innocent fisherman were murdered in a botched SEAL Team 6 attempt to plant a listening device, whatever affection Kim and Trump once toyed at is long gone.
PREVIOUSLY!
Trump’s No Good, Very Bad, Botched 2019 North Korean Spy Operation
And after Trump has done his best to abandon Ukraine, can South Korea count on the US for a robust defense if Kim gets more testy? Surely they’re wondering, just like the rest of our one-time best allies are, and Kim is too.
To recap, in case you weren’t alive yet, the US fought an entire war to keep South Korea from being taken over by the Stalinist-style dictatorship to the north. Since 1910 Korea had been occupied by Japan. But after Japan’s defeat in World War II, Korea declared independence. But they didn’t entirely get it. After the surrender of Japan, in September 1945, General Douglas MacArthur issued Proclamation No. 1, decreeing the country would be divided in two. The Japanese forces in the north, above the 38th parallel, were ordered to surrender to the Commander in Chief of Soviet Forces in the Far East, and the ones in the south were ordered to surrender to the US.
The Soviets were our friends at the time, since they’d just helped us defeat the Nazis, so it seemed only fair to give them their share of the world in the carve-up at Yalta.
And so between around 1945 and 1948, a US-appointed military governor, Lieutenant General John R. Hodge, was the top government official there, until South Korea elected its own leader, Syngman Rhee. And in the Soviet-Korean Zone of Occupation, the Soviets agreed to the establishment of a communist government, led by Kim Jong-un’s grandpa, Kim Il Sung. And then the Americans left in 1948, and the Soviets in 1949.
But peace didn’t last long. In 1950 the north tried to invade the south, and got as far as attacking Seoul. And the UN (with 90 percent of its forces coming from America) came to the south’s defense, because Harry S. Truman was worried that communism might spread. There was a three-year-long war, and about 3 million people were killed, including more than 37,000 American soldiers. Then in 1953 the Korean Armistice Agreement ended the hot part of the war. But US and UN forces have been there ever since, to keep it from happening again, and to keep an eye on that corner of the world. Right now there’s about 15 US bases with 24,000-ish soldiers, and hundreds of military installations.
And so the US and South Korea have stayed close. We gave them baseball, and they gave us many loyal citizens, PSY, KPop, terrifying horror movies, and many wonderful products like cars, phones, and cheerful appliances that sing happy little songs when their cycles are finished. And a whole lot of factory robots too, including ones in Ford and Chevy plants.
So Korea just breaking up with us is not so simple.
End of detour.
Korea is understandably freaked out and fucking furious, and the story has been on the cover of every newspaper since Friday, as it would be here if Korea shackled American citizens who were there lawfully and because the government asked them to be, then locked them up in some hellish prison that does not meet basic safety standards and refused to let them go.
ICE officials say that some of the detainees crossed into the US unlawfully; others had overstayed visas; others were on visa waivers allowing entry for tourism or business but do not permit employment, and there’s at least one lawful resident who is still being detained anyway. But ICE still hasn’t shown any evidence of anything yet.
And the find-out phase has arrived! Korean companies are now reconsidering their investments. Projects in at least 22 other factory sites in the US have now been halted, and some companies, including Hyundai, have stopped travel of their workers to the US and are bringing workers back out of fear they may be ICE’d too. According to a poll by The Korea Economic Daily of 14 major Korean companies on Monday, 57.1 percent of the respondents said they may adjust ongoing US projects, and 16.7 percent are reviewing US investments for possible delays in construction and plant opening. And the government held an emergency meeting with companies investing in the US, to formulate a plan to keep it from happening again.
Meanwhile, the missing workers and shut-down plant in Ellabell are already denting the local economy, and a local shop owner is worried about going broke because the Korean workers aren’t showing up for their traditional breakfast of cigarettes and ice cream.
And sounds like it’s dawned on the old man a little too late that this was a colossal fuckup.
So, let that be a lesson to you, foreign investors! Just as in Russia, sure, we’ll take anybody’s money they want to invest, so long as they remember they serve at the pleasure of the regime. But hell, even Putin is not so capricious as to arrest everybody at some factory and shut it down just because some Karen on Russian TikTok got her fanny in a knot.
That unpredictable touch and antagonizing allies, that is Trump’s special art of the deal!
[AP / CNN / The Korea Economic Daily]
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