{"id":238446,"date":"2025-09-19T08:09:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T08:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/238446\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T08:09:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T08:09:21","slug":"hyundai-ceo-distances-company-from-ice-raid-not-our-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/238446\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyundai CEO distances company from ICE raid: \u2018not our facility\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI could not believe what I saw because I would have known, probably before the news,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz said, when asked about his initial reaction to the raid. \u201cSo I said, something is weird here. How can something happen [and] nobody told me? And when I go into the details, then I realize it\u2019s not our facility. It\u2019s LG\u2019s battery plant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I said, something is weird here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like something happened in Fox News,\u201d he continued, in response to a question from a CNN reporter. \u201cAnd they said, \u2018How come you didn\u2019t know?\u2018 I said, \u2019Hey, I\u2019m working for CNN,\u2019 right? So same deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mu\u00f1oz griped that all the media\u2019s photos of the raid have shown Hyundai\u2019s Metaplant facility rather than the neighboring LG factory. \u201cAll the pictures that were shown everywhere, they are pictures of a facility which is different from where the raid happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

His remarks come a few days after he confirmed that the plant\u2019s construction would be delayed two to three months<\/a> due to labor shortages. And they come amid the growing fallout from the September 4th raid, which resulted in the arrest of 475 workers, most of whom were from South Korea, at the battery plant that is jointly operated by Hyundai and LG Energy Solutions.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has sought to placate South Korea after the raid, announcing<\/a> that he will allow foreign companies to temporarily bring in \u201cpeople of expertise\u201d to train American workers. But critics say the damage may already have been done, as foreign companies now realize their own workers could get rounded up in Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n

The Hyundai-LG raid was so unusual because it seemed to target a fairly typical situation. When opening a new facility in the US, foreign automakers typically bring a cadre of their own employees to help with the construction and then, once it\u2019s completed, train American workers to operate it. Labor experts warn that the ICE raid in Georgia could chill foreign investment in the US and target particular industries, especially automakers working on EVs.<\/p>\n

Mu\u00f1oz defended the foreign workers who were in Georgia to help build the factory, arguing that the expertise to build these specialized factories doesn\u2019t exist in the US. And he called for the creation of a new type of visa for highly skilled workers who help develop these enormous projects, to ensure future raids don\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the US government has acknowledged that there needs to be a better solution to address this type of situation,\u201d he said. \u201cI think both governments in South Korea and the US are working actively to try to ensure that situations like this don\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI could not believe what I saw because I would have known, probably before the news,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz said,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":238447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,419,50,153,522,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-238446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cars","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-policy","12":"tag-transportation","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115229947580314610","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}