September 9, 2025 - DHS Raids on Hyundai-LG May Cost US Investment and Jobs

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for September 9, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

Hyundai and its partners have announced more than $26 billion in investments into the US in the past year including a new steel plant, a vehicle assembly plant in Georgia and a neighboring battery factory that is a joint-venture with LG Energy Solution. Those investments that aren't already complete and thousands of jobs that go along with them as well as future investments from other companies may now be in jeopardy. 

Last Friday, agents from several agencies of the Department of Homeland Security converged on the factory site west of Savannah and detained more than 475 people that it claimed were in the country illegally. Among those were more than 300 people from South Korea, including employees of Hyundai Motor Group, LGES and other suppliers. Most were apparently involved with the setup of the battery plan,t although some may have also been working at the assembly plant. 

It's not clear at this stage what the actual legal status of these people is and whether they had proper visas and permits to be working at the site, but the South Korean government quickly intervened and got them released. The government also chartered a plane to bring them all back to South Korea. 

It's standard practice when a company is setting up a new facility in another country to send some of its staff to the site to oversee construction and equipment installation. It's also common for engineers and technicians from suppliers that produce the equipment to be on site, even when the facility is in the same country they are based in. Much of the manufacturing equipment is very sensitive, especially for battery production, and it's essential to get every setup properly and debugged before production begins. LGES knows this as well as anyone since it has had several recalls for manufacturing defects in cells that led to battery fires. Typically, these people will be present during installation, commissioning and early stages of production before handing off responsibility to local staff that they have also helped train. 

The whole incident was instigated by a report from Tori Branum, a Republican running for Congress, who claimed the foreign workers were taking jobs that were supposed to go to locals. Unfortunately, this action by DHS is likely to make companies from other countries much more wary about setting up facilities in the United States going forward if there is a risk that their staff will be detained and potentially deported. Increasingly, countries that have been long-time US allies are losing trust in the US, and this is likely to cost us business, especially in fields where we lag behind technologically. 

Thanks for listening.