South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung is warning that the country's companies will be "very hesitant" to invest in the U.S., in the wake of an immigration raid at a Georgia Hyundai-LG Energy Solution plant where 300 South Koreans were arrested. 

Speaking at a September 10 press conference reported on by BBC News, Lee called the situation "extremely bewildering," and noted that it's common for South Korean companies to send their own workers to other countries to help set up factories overseas. 

"If that's no longer allowed, establishing manufacturing facilities in the U.S. will only become more difficult," he said, adding that it could make companies question whether it's worth doing at all.

During the September 4 raid, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained 475 people, 300 of whom were South Korean nationals who were reportedly there on short-term business-related travel visas. The Trump administration has since defended the arrests, claiming that the workers were performing tasks that were not permitted under the terms of their visas.

The South Korean nationals were also said to have been handcuffed while they were transported by bus to Atlanta, in a decision that Lee said was "strongly opposed" by his administration. Following the arrests, President Trump offered to allow the workers to remain in the U.S. to train their American counterparts, with all but one rejecting the overture and instead opting to return home to South Korea.

On September 10, Bloomberg reported that LG Energy Solution had decided to postpone the opening of the Georgia plant where the raid took place, while Hyundai had banned all U.S. trips by its staff. The factory had previously been praised by Georgia's Republican Governor Brian Kemp as the biggest economic development project in the state's history.