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By Emmanuel Williams

September 12, 2025

I received the news of 475 workers, “more than 300 of them South Korean” (Kim and Tong-hyung, 2025) American Immigrants returning to South Korea today after being detained and flown back from their jobs at a Hyundai Factory in Georgia with an unusual sense of mouth dropping betrayal. This latest round of detainees from an ICE raid on an American work site had all the markings of targeting an undesirable population. Then I stepped back when I heard the television mention that all of these employees came from one factory in one city, yet the company had hired these employees based on the fact that they had skills not found in America. The skills required by the organization to produce their vehicles. In this case, electric vehicles (EV’s). Along with a language barrier that would far more than likely make an American applicant looking into the factory more than hesitant.

This is the story of what happened when I tried to prove whether or not Trump’s immigration policy has really been a sickening, brutal attempt to increase the competitive edge for not just American citizens, not just American companies, but specifically the companies that hover within Trump’s Orbit, and whether or not that benefits Trump the President of the United States or just Donald J. Trump and his American empire in posterity post-office.

The first stop was to look at who ICE has been targeting over Trump’s 2 nonconsecutive terms in office, the biggest raid being of a poultry plant in Mississippi in August of 2019 where 680 ‘inadmissible and removable aliens’ (WH.gov) were detained during Term 1.

Detainees are not immediately deported. Some are held shortly and released, others are held long term, still others are penalized criminally. The time spent away from any family they may have in the US or elsewhere while detained is not something I have been able to quantify or specify that impact thus far.

I want to pause the thesis to reflect on the idea that what is happening to our friends who have tourist or work visas, the right to live and work in America under previous presidents are facing the fallout of a Far Right Nationalist American President gaining office once again. 

And since the announcement of America First policies in 2018, and the stream of executive orders tied to “PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAINST INVASION” (WH.gov) in January, 2025, afterwhich Homeland Security and ICE made their biggest work site raids in 2019 and 2025 respectively, those companies employing foreign employees and lose them to raids to the magnitude of the cell phone refurbishing company in Allen, TX where 280 were taken (2019), the meat production plant in Omaha, NE where 70 were taken, the Mississippi poultry plant where 680 were taken (2019), and the Hyundai Factory in Georgia where 475 were taken from a work site that only employed 1200 employees total. 

(Let’s not forget the raid at legal cannabis producer Glass House Farms in California on July 10 of this year, where 361 were taken.)

According to the Associated Press, Hyundai only started to make electric vehicles a year ago (Bynum, 2025). Are Trump and Musk still friends? Because speculatively, the president just did him a solid by weakening potential competition from a major foreign auto company. What’s to stop the president from using ICE raids to fire hundreds of foreign employees who have the required skills so that Americans can have work, even though while Americans are training for these skills, companies like Hyundai will suffer a bruised and wounded workforce with over a third of their personnel removed in one day? Oh, and deported the next.

I don’t see ICE raiding Ford factories for undocumented workers or Starbuck’s. No one wants that. Fuck, nobody wanted THIS but the other Far Right American Nationalists sitting in the president’s cabinet, stuffed into Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court, and wearing red MAGA hats in the front row of major league sports games. 

Regardless, as usual, Trump’s publicly stated intentions are opposite of what the effect ends up being. We are not under invasion. Except from Far Right Nationalists who have inserted themselves in our political courts, congress, and highest offices and twisted our constitution into knots with the legal system’s Achilles heel: expensive lawyers paid handsomely.

In so doing they have upended equality, true democracy, the roots of the United States as an inclusive nation welcoming all colors, cultures, and creeds. A nation that before Trump, was growing in its embrace, tolerance, and the ideals of neighborhood and community.

I cannot prove that deportations will continue to target rival companies of Trump oligarchs, whether they be Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos himself. 

But I bet North Korean Dictator Kin Jong Un is having a drink in honor of the United States Homeland Security who took a shit on its usual allies, South Korea in their ICE raid on the Hyundai plant, and deported 299 (one of them decided to stay in America) South Koreans who landed back home today after losing faith in being welcome in the greatest nation on earth.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – United States Declaration of Independence

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Sources & Further Reading:

Bynum, Russ. “US Immigration Officers Raid Hyundai’s Electric Vehicle Site in Georgia.” AP News, 4 Sept. 2025, apnews.com/article/immigration-raid-hyundai-georgia-electric-vehicles-191904f42f540898035feb2a6623d98e.

Kim, Hyung-Jin, and Kim Tong-hyung. “South Korea Sends Plane to US to Bring Back Workers Detained in Immigration Raid.” AP News, 10 Sept. 2025, apnews.com/article/south-korea-immigration-raid-georgia-hyundai-trump-69c55c9b9e635d0d5413f972d634a9a1.

“President Donald J. Trump’s Foreign Policy Puts America First – the White House.” Trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov, trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-foreign-policy-puts-america-first/.

The White House. “Protecting the American People against Invasion.” The White House, 20 Jan. 2025, www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-american-people-against-invasion/.