The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board ripped the Trump administration's mass deportation effort, citing the fallout from last week's "blunderbuss raid" on a Hyundai plant in Georgia.
Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a major raid on an electric vehicle battery plant under construction in Ellabell. Nearly 500 workers, including over 300 South Korean nationals, were detained for visa and immigration violations.
The raid caught the Journal editors' attention on Friday evening.
"Still think mass deportation has no economic or political consequences? The fallout from last week’s blunderbuss raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia continues to reverberate in South Korea, and it pays to listen to President Lee Jae Myung’s remarks this week," the editors wrote.
“This could significantly impact future direct investment in the U.S.,” Lee said at a news conference. Companies in the country “can’t help hesitating a lot” about making new investments in the United States, fearing their workers could wind up in detention facilities.
Lee noted the workers were not meant to be in the United States long term.
"When you build a facility or install equipment at a plant, you need technicians, but the U.S. doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work," he said.
The Journal lamented that statement "may be hard for Americans to hear, but it’s true. The U.S. doesn’t have the workforce to do these jobs."
And while the Trump administration has insisted that some of the workers entered the country illegally and others were working on expired visas, the Journal warned that there will be repercussions.
"Whatever the case, raids like the one in Georgia are a deterrent to the foreign investment Donald Trump says he wants," the said.
The Georgia raid comes as the Trump administration cracks down on both legal and illegal immigration nationwide. In a Chicago suburb, a man was shot dead by ICE during a traffic stop confrontation.
