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by aeonfox 274 days ago
> Most of the people detained were South Korean nationals with the wrong kind of visas.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/09/10/the-ice-r...

> I'm not particularly sympathetic to Hyundai here, and it wouldn't be surprising if they subcontracted a sublegal operation to cut costs

Often Visa systems are overly complex and it's just a matter of bureaucracy making things impossible within a particular timeline. My cynical lens on this is that someone with a vested interest (like a competing company or a lobbyist from a competing industry) that has the ear of the administration has made this happen.

All the same, I imagine this only worsens the risk assessment for the US as a place of investment and business.
2 comments
vkou 274 days ago
> My cynical lens on this is that someone with a vested interest (like a competing company or a lobbyist from a competing industry) that has the ear of the administration has made this happen.

You don't need to go that far. Simple incompetence, cruelty, a complete lack of accountability and a need to meet quota is a sufficient explanation.

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sandworm101 274 days ago
Like maybe someone other than Hyundai that makes electric cars? Reports said this raid took months to plan. Who had the president's ear a few months ago?
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aeonfox 273 days ago
> Like maybe someone other than Hyundai that makes electric cars?

Well this is specifically a battery plant. So any local competitors with battery products have a vested interest. Or makers of gasoline cars. Or oil refineries, or any company in the supply chain that sells fuel for motor vehicles. Battery plants can also manufacture cells for grid storage, so that includes gas drillers, nuclear, etc. and their whole supply chain. That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more vested interested than that.

> Who had the president's ear

Specifically I said 'the administration'. Governments are large institutions that are famously impressionable by corporate interests, especially so—and particularly now—in the US where many of the safeties are off in comparison to other modern western democracies.

> a few months ago?

Regulatory capture happens over a much longer timeframe.

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