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NEW YORK: President Donald Trump on Sunday said foreign workers sent to the United States are “welcome” and he doesn’t want to “frighten off” investors, 10 days after hundreds of South Koreans were arrested at a work site in Georgia.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the 79-year-old Republican wrote: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize investment.”
Some 475 people, mostly South Korean nationals, were arrested at the construction site of an electric vehicle battery factory, operated by Hyundai-LG, in the southeastern US state of Georgia on September 4.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials alleged South Koreans had overstayed their visas or held permits that didn’t allow them to perform manual labor.
The Georgia raid was the largest single-site operation conducted since Trump launched a sweeping immigration crackdown across the country.
Though the United States decided against deportation, images of the workers being chained and handcuffed during the raid caused widespread alarm in South Korea.
Seoul repatriated the workers on Friday.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called the raid “bewildering” and warned Thursday that the raid could discourage future investment.
In his post, Trump described the circumstances for temporarily allowing foreign experts into the US to build “extremely complex products.”
“Chips, Semiconductors, Computers, Ships, Trains, and so many other products that we have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn because we used to be great at it, but not anymore,” Trump wrote.
“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 in the not too distant future,” Trump added.
Korea’s trade unions have called on Trump to issue an official apology.

SYROS: Two ships set sail Sunday evening from the Greek island of Syros to join the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international mission aiming to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, AFP journalists saw.
Chanting “Free Palestine,” around 500 people gathered at the port of Ermopoulis to see off the two Greece-flagged boats, the Oxygen and Ilektra, carrying goods for famine-hit Gaza along with five and eight people on board respectively.
“This is the way to show Israel that it shouldn’t have the right to impose starvation,” Kostas Fourikos, a 39-year-old crew member told AFP. “And of course to send the message of solidarity to the Palestinians, who suffer so much.”
Another crew member, Angeliki Savvantoglou, said the flotilla aimed to “put pressure on our own governments to also stop collaborating with Israel and stop this genocide.
“Eventually, we want this genocide to stop,” the 35-year-old added.
The two vessels are set to join the rest of the fleet, which hopes to help relieve the spiralling humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel’s war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas grinds on.
In August, as a result of the conflict, the United Nations officially declared famine in and around Gaza City, home to around a million people.
Israel denies the existence of famine in the coastal territory.
Attack fears
Backed by high-profile participants including environmental activist Greta Thunberg, the pro-Palestinian Global Sumud flotilla describes itself as an independent group not linked to any government or political party.
Sumud is Arabic word for “resilience.”
Its journey to the Gaza Strip has been dogged by at least two suspected drone attacks while docked off the coast of Tunisia, sparking concern for the safety of the Greek ships.
Crew member Savvantoglou played down such concerns fears. “I think we are all worried, but we’re also all very prepared for as much as we can be prepared for,” she told AFP.
“What we are facing all these days with the bureaucracy or even with the drone attacks in Tunisia is nothing in comparison to just one minute of being alive in Gaza.”
Along with Rhodes and Crete, Syros saw demonstrations rallying hundreds of people in July to prevent the Israeli cruise ship Crown Iris from docking, in response to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The Gaza war erupted in October 2023, triggered by a Hamas attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,871 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The UN considers those figures to be reliable.