President Donald Trump on Sunday said foreign workers sent to the United States are “welcome” and he doesn’t want to “frighten off” investors, 10 days after hundreds of South Koreans were arrested at a work site in Georgia.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the 79-year-old Republican wrote: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize investment.”
Some 475 people, mostly South Korean nationals, were arrested at the construction site of an electric vehicle battery factory, operated by Hyundai-LG, in the southeastern US state of Georgia on September 4.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials alleged South Koreans had overstayed their visas or held permits that didn’t allow them to perform manual labor.
The Georgia raid was the largest single-site operation conducted since Trump launched a sweeping immigration crackdown across the country.
Though the United States decided against deportation, images of the workers being chained and handcuffed during the raid caused widespread alarm in South Korea.
Seoul repatriated the workers on Friday.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called the raid “bewildering” and warned Thursday that the raid could discourage future investment.
In his post, Trump described the circumstances for temporarily allowing foreign experts into the US to build “extremely complex products.”
“Chips, Semiconductors, Computers, Ships, Trains, and so many other products that we have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn because we used to be great at it, but not anymore,” Trump wrote.
“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 in the not too distant future,” Trump added.
Korea’s trade unions have called on Trump to issue an official apology.