What did Donald Trump do today?

He realized, too late, how badly he'd screwed things up with South Korea.

On September 4, more than 300 Korean workers employed in setting up a new electric vehicle battery plant in Georgia were arrested and detained by ICE agents. ICE was responding to a tip by a woman trying to get attention for her campaign for Georgia state legislature.

In many respects, this was a routine operation under the Trump system. The people seized appear to have been here on valid short-term work visas, but Trump's immigration quotas mean that ICE is imprisoning legal immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. They were detained without explanation for more than a week in horrific conditions—but again, that is by design under Trump. 

But these workers, who were installing proprietary technology on behalf of a Korean company, are irreplaceable—and the widespread horror in South Korea that greeted the news of how they had been treated is now jeopardizing much more than a single factory and the American jobs that depend on it. That battery plant will now be delayed for months if it is built at all, and Hyundai is now reconsidering its planned $26 billion investment in other American factories. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who had to personally intervene to prevent the workers from being shipped back in handcuffs, has signaled that this incident has jeopardized several hundred billion more dollars in planned investments and lowered the chance of a trade agreement with South Korea.

The detained workers arrived back in Seoul on Saturday, alongside intense media coverage of the racist insults and physically cruel treatment they received at the hands of their American captors. They spoke of having to drink by licking water off the floor, of being kept in dirty urine-soaked cells, and of being taunted by guards with racist gestures and references to "Rocket Man," Trump's former nickname for Kim Jong-un of North Korea. A Korean news article gave this account:

Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink. The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours. Detained by US immigration authorities for eight days, the workers and their families expressed shock, describing human rights violations and absurdities they could not have imagined as ordinary Koreans living in 2025. 

In a measure of how serious the issue has become, even Trump himself seems to have realized the damage he's done. Late last night (Monday morning in Korea), he posted what—for him—is perhaps the closest he has ever come to an apology for anything he's ever done:

 

It was clear from South Korea's response that this approach—combining a hint of regret with a promise to beat Korea at its own game—has failed. The South Korean government announced today that it has begun a human rights inquiry into how its citizens were treated, a level of diplomatic frostiness almost unheard of between the two countries.

This is not the first time that Trump's American-against-the-entire-world strategy has backfired. Canadian consumers are organizing boycotts of American-made goods, especially alcoholic beverages, devastating the industry in the United States. Foreign tourism—normally one of the most profitable sectors in the economy—has fallen off a cliff, not only because travelers worry about being arbitrarily detained, but out of a sense that the United States has become hostile to them. The same is true for higher education, another multi-billion-dollar vector for money coming into the U.S. that is now suddenly drying up.

It's reasonable to believe that Trump didn't intend for these highly skilled, irreplaceable, politically sensitive workers to come to harm. But it's also fair to say at this point that Trump has almost no control over what ICE and CBP do at all. The policy end has been seized by his aide Stephen Miller, and the front-line agents—many of them new and not yet trained—have embraced a culture of lawlessness and impunity. 

That's not just hurting high-tech businesses—it's also crippling farmers, construction, and other domestic American industries that are completely dependent on foreign labor.

Why does this matter?

• If your immigration policies accidentally put hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of jobs at risk for no reason, then your immigration policies are stupid. 

• Alienating our allies makes the United States poorer and weaker. 

• Even if there were no other consequences, subjecting anyone to human rights abuses—never mind guest workers with valid visas—is beneath the dignity of the United States.