When I visited Hyundai Motor’s “Metaplant” in May to drive the new Ioniq9 electric SUV, the facility was a symbol of everything right about U.S. auto manufacturing. It’s a US $7.6 billion showpiece of automation staffed by gung-ho and highly skilled workers, capable of churning out 500,000 EVs a year at full crank. The biggest publicly backed project in Georgia’s history, the Metaplant is the linchpin of Republican Governor Brian Kemp’s bid to make the state the “electric mobility capital of the country.”
Then it all went wrong. On 4 September, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided the supersized facility in Ellabell, Ga., about one hour from Savannah. Agents arrested some 475 people—including more than 300 South Korean contractors—and led them away in shackles and handcuffs. Those temporary workers were building a battery factory at the Metaplant campus and training colleagues that included Americans. Following a week of detention, and tense negotiations between the South Korean and U.S. governments, the workers were ejected from the U.S. and sent home on a chartered plane. Outraged Korean officials opened an investigation into potential human rights abuses during the workers’ incarceration.
“America is not a safe place to work,” one of the workers told The New York Times, after his return home.
Production of the Ioniq9 and smaller Ioniq5 has proceeded apace. But the opening of the battery plant, jointly owned by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, has been pushed back by at least two months. And the episode laid bare some messy contradictions, as America seeks to stand up an EV-and-battery business that can compete against China.
The Trump Administration’s Mixed Messages Confuse Investors
President Trump has demanded that foreign companies build products in the U.S., using tariffs and other strongarm tactics to secure investment pledges. That contrasts with President Biden’s carrot-and-stick approach, including the Inflation Reduction Act, which offered generous incentives to manufacturers and consumers. The Trump administration has also been nakedly hostile toward EVs and green initiatives, seeking to reverse Biden’s ambitious pollution and fuel-economy agenda, and deny the ability of California and other states to set their own greenhouse-gas standards. At the administration’s behest, the GOP-led Congress eliminated a $7,500 clean-car tax credit that ended Sept. 30. That tax break had spurred Hyundai to accelerate the Metaplant’s construction to make their EVs eligible for credits, and, over the years, had helped make EVs more affordable for hundreds of thousands of Americans. In the wary dalliance between Trump and manufacturers, there are enough mixed messages to keep a hundred dating apps buzzing.
“The Trump administration was raving about the plant, but then raided it less than two weeks later,” says Betony Jones, who served as senior advisor on labor to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Michigan’s former governor, and directed the Department of Energy’s office of energy jobs in the Biden administration. “It’s a confusing situation, and confusing for foreign investors,” she adds.
Trump insisted he had no intention of “frightening off” specialized workers such as the South Koreans, some of whom had helped build car, battery or semiconductor factories around the world, including in Michigan, Texas, Poland, Indonesia and the Middle East.
“We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own ‘game,’ sometime into the not too distant future!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Responding to a question from IEEE Spectrum, Kush Desai, a White House deputy press secretary, said the President will support any company investing in the U.S. by slashing regulations and enabling them to bring in technical experts to set up facilities and train American workers. “Industry leaders in sectors ranging from autos to pharmaceuticals to technology have committed to investing trillions in the United States because they know they have a friend and ally in the White House,” Desai said.
Yet South Korean president Lee Jae Myung said the ICE raid might make companies hesitant to build in the U.S. Hyundai had pledged in March to boost its total investment in the U.S. to $21 billion through 2028. The controversial raid comes at a fraught moment for EVs, amid slowing consumer demand and steep tariffs on raw materials and import cars, which have led many automakers to scale back electric plans and lean back into ICE cars and hybrids.
The raid, Jones says, also exposed familiar fault lines in labor and manufacturing. These included ones related to workplace safety and the proper role of foreign workers, and the tendency of foreign manufacturers to locate factories in the southern U.S., where they can operate free of union labor, often at lower wages. A TV station near the Hyundai complex, WTOC, had aired investigative reports about poor safety conditions and unauthorized labor at the plant. At least three workers have died there, according to law enforcement. Hyundai has sought to distance itself from the battery portion of the Metaplant, saying none of the foreign contractors were directly employed by the automaker. Both Hyundai and LG Energy Solution have begun their own inquiries into the raid, and have vowed to follow all laws and rules, including those for workplace safety.
Deportations Renew Attention to Visa Policy
In Georgia, many contract workers had arrived on six-month B1 visas issued for business travel, or through a visa-waiver program that allows stays of up to 90 days. Some companies, experts say, have played fast-and-loose with visa rules, in part because H-1B visas, which allow six-year stays for employees, are expensive and in short supply. Several South Korean companies have struggled to obtain short-term visas to bring enough specialized workers to their leading-edge plants.
“Previous U.S. administrations had largely turned a blind eye to” the visa abuses, according to The Guardian.
The Trump administration now faces criticism for its new policy to charge $100,000 for those coveted H-1B visas, which some companies say would be counterproductive, unaffordable and potentially illegal. In Georgia, some local union workers said they had been unfairly bypassed for work in the battery plant.
“They feel they were ready and willing to do some of the jobs foreign workers were doing,” Jones says. “So what does that knowledge-transfer need to look like? How do we pivot from foreign workers and train up a U.S. workforce that has enough specialized skills to do those jobs?”
As General Motors pivoted to EVs, it struggled to scale up battery plants in Ohio and Tennessee, in a joint venture with LG Energy to manufacture a new line of batteries called Ultium Cells. The automaker’s “Factory Zero” in Detroit — where President Biden lauded GM CEO Mary Barra in 2021, and test-drove a GMC Hummer EV in a parking lot — also suffered glitches as GM sought to rush its batteries and EVs into production. That included a fire when a forklift pierced a stack of robotically-assembled batteries.
The Detroit factory was the American industry’s first attempt to scale up a fully automated assembly line to make pouch-style batteries (which have since been partially supplanted by prismatic cells). GM raced to bring in outside battery consultants and executives to fix battery and assembly issues, finally hiring former Tesla battery chief Kurt Kelty to run its battery operations. It paid off: after those frustrating growing pains, GM began cranking out Ultium batteries, and is now America’s leading producer of lithium-ion cells among automakers.
Jones says that manufacturers, foreign or domestic, are simply crying out for certainty and clear policy directions. “That’s what will attract investment, and that’s where the Trump administration has done irreparable harm,” she says. “The ICE raid is just the cherry on top. How is anybody going to trust us going forward?”
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