By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration plans to target more businesses for immigration enforcement after a raid on a Hyundai facility in Georgia led to hundreds of arrests, a top White House official said on Sunday.
Speaking on CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ White House border czar Tom Homan said the administration would intensify the focus on workplaces.
“We’re going to do more worksite enforcement operations,” Homan said. “No one hires an illegal alien out of the goodness of their heart. They hire them because they can work them harder, pay them less, undercut the competition that hires U.S. citizen employees.”
Opponents of Trump’s crackdown and some business groups say major U.S. industries – including agriculture, hospitality and meatpacking – depend on immigrants without legal status.
U.S. immigration authorities arrested 475 people on immigration violations during the raid of the Hyundai facility on Thursday, most of whom were South Korean nationals. The South Korean government said on Sunday that the workers would be returned once administrative procedures were completed.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said during a press conference on Friday that some of the people arrested at the facility had crossed the border illegally and overstayed visas. A separate ICE official told Reuters that many had visas for tourists and business travelers that do not include a work permit.
The arrests in Georgia followed tougher rhetoric by Trump on illegal immigration. For weeks, Trump and his top officials have suggested the administration could send National Guard troops and federal officers to Chicago to target crime and immigration.
In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump posted a meme based on the 1979 Vietnam war movie “Apocalypse Now” that showed an image of the Chicago skyline with flames and helicopters, reminiscent of the deadly helicopter attack on a Vietnamese village in the film.
On CNN, Homan defended the meme, which has been heavily criticized by Chicago residents and others for its warlike imagery and suggestion that the city is a military target. He said it was being taken out of context and that the Trump administration was only going to war with criminals and those violating immigration laws.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Ross Colvin and Andrea Ricci)
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