Hyundai Will Soon Celebrate The Completion Of New Savannah Plant 7 Months After Immigration Raid

After an international incident that threatened to derail Korean carmaker Hyundai's investment in the U.S., the company is putting the finishing touches on its new manufacturing plant in Georgia.

The vehicle giant will soon finish its 2.5M SF electric vehicle battery factory on the outskirts of Savannah, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. 

This comes a little more than half a year after a September raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the plant, which resulted in the detention of more than 400 workers and caused a political rift between the U.S. and South Korea.

Hyundai CEO José Muñoz announced this week that work on the $7.6B battery factory in Ellabell, Georgia, half an hour from Savannah, would be complete this month.

The Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America is a joint venture between Hyundai and LG Energy Solution Ltd., also based in Korea. It is slated to hire about 8,500 workers once operational.

But the surprise raid on the plant put the development in jeopardy when federal officials detained 475 workers, including more than 300 South Korean nationals employed on business visas. The move threatened to upend Hyundai’s pledge to invest some $26B in the U.S. through 2028. 

Workers at the plant who were arrested on expired or ineligible visas were training American counterparts to install and operate machinery, the AJC previously reported. Hyundai officials have said the plant will be staffed largely by local employees.

The raid required rapid damage control at the highest diplomatic levels, including a phone call by a Trump administration official to apologize to the Hyundai CEO for the raid.

Diplomatic moves largely mitigated the fallout and curtailed a possible retreat by foreign investment in U.S. onshoring and manufacturing, said Tibor Besedeš, an economics professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

“There hasn’t been anything like it happening since. It’s one of those things that perhaps is a lesson learned,” Besedeš said. “The worst thing that could have happened is for Hyundai to pull up its stakes and say, ‘We’re done.’”

At the Semafor World Economy conference in Washington, D.C., Muñoz said Tuesday that the raid hasn’t altered Hyundai’s investment plans in the American market, the AJC reported.

In fact, Muñoz told the Semafor audience on Tuesday that the automotive giant focused on hurrying the completion of the plant since the raid.

“And we were able to catch up,” he said, according to the AJC. “So we are launching on time.”

Hyundai's recommitment may have placated other foreign firms rattled by immigration raids, Besedeš said. 

“I don’t think any of the other foreign firms thinking about foreign investment in the U.S. [have] pulled back,” he said. 

Babak Hafezi, an adjunct professor at American University's Kogod School of Business, said it likely wasn’t a realistic option for South Korea and other foreign countries to pull back from U.S. investments. The country's military might and its economy are too critical to their own financial stability and security, he said.

Still, while the aggressive enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security has simmered down somewhat in recent weeks, Hafezi said there remains a lack of coherence between the Trump administration’s economic development policies to encourage onshoring and its immigration crackdowns.

“Every single day, there are raids throughout the United States, but they’re not as public. They’re smaller,” Hafezi said. 

Last month, the South Korean parliament approved a bill to allow $350B in U.S. investments, including $150B related to shipbuilding, in exchange for more favorable tariff terms, Reuters reported. The country is operating pragmatically, Hafezi said.

“They cannot just walk away and feel like they’re safer,” he said.