Hyundai CEO found out about ICE raid at Georgia battery plant on the news

By Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN

New York (CNN) — When the US Department of Homeland Security conducted its largest single-site enforcement operation in history at the Hyundai – LG Battery Plant in Georgia earlier this month, Hyundai’s CEO was working out of his California office. He said he found out about it on the news.

“I could not believe what I saw because I would’ve known normally before the news,” CEO José Muñoz told CNN in a media roundtable Thursday.

Muñoz said that the EV battery plant in Ellabell, Georgia, is operated by South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, which is likely why he wasn’t notified right away. More than 300 South Korean workers were detained by ICE during a raid at the joint venture on September 4th and were deported back to South Korea last week. Muñoz says he’s been in touch with the Trump administration since the raid.

“I think both governments, South Korea and the US are working activity to try to ensure that situation like this don’t happen again,” Muñoz told reporters.

Earlier on Thursday, Muñoz opened the company’s first US investor conference in New York City by expressing his compassion to those workers and their families.

“I want to express our sincere empathy for the workers from our supplier partner companies who were detained. We understand the stress and hardship this has caused for them and their families,” he said.

Hyundai has poured billions of dollars of investment into the United States and the EV battery plant in Ellabell as part of the largest economic development project in Georgia’s history, Munoz told investors.

Muñoz previously said the raid would delay the opening of the battery plant, which is still under construction, by two to three months. But Hyundai recommitted its investment plans Thursday to phase two of the Georgia complex, totaling $2.7 billion and 3,000 new jobs.

The South Korean workers that were deported were specialized workers in the joint venture battery plant. Muñoz told reporters Thursday that the company has had to move workers from other plants to make up for the lost labor.

“What I’ve learned in the past couple of days and weeks is that activities in this particular battery factory that require a very specific expertise that is not in the country,” Muñoz told reporters.

Muñoz said foreign workers needed for specialized work should have a special visa and the ability to come in and out of the United States. Countries like Canada, Mexico, Singapore and Chile have such visas for specialized workers with the US, but South Korea does not.

“I believe there needs to be a visa which is especially designed for these types of people that may need to enter the country five or six or six, seven times. Once the factory is finished, they don’t come back again,” Muñoz told CNN at the roundtable.

Asked by if he was worried a raid like this could happen again: “Nobody can say they are exempt (from) everything.”

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