The best I could find was a suggestion that their visa waivers were in fact correct for the purpose, except for the fact that their companies were using visa waivers over and over again. Or maybe the workers were? I'm not sure.
It's pretty obvious and not a real point of contention. Being honest about this does not support the raid, and acting as if it does helps nobody and only hurts.
[0] https://www.teamblind.com/kr/post/%ED%98%84%EC%B0%A8-%EC%97%...
>U.S. authorities said some of the detained Korean workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others entered legally but had expired visas or entered on visa waivers that prohibited them from working.
From PBS, a source with a well known editorial stance against the current administration.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/south-korean-workers-retu...
>Like many of the Koreans who were working there, advocates and lawyers representing the non-Korean workers caught up in the raid say that some who were detained had legal authorization to work in the United States.
LA Times, similar
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-09-14/famili...
With any of these contentious partisan issues it is important to be wary of cherry picking. Typically events are selectively reported to fit a given partisan agenda.
It would be extreme to believe that entire groups are being arbitrarily detained and deported. Similarly, it isn't unreasonable to expect mistakes to be made. The reasonable thing to do with extreme claims such as the ones made in this thread is to do a simple Google search before engaging in partisan flames. It has become almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion here on any topic which may tangentially involve Trump.
There is one side that makes it impossible. Let's not confuse that.
I don't generally favor Trump's policies or the opposition's. Yet it is impossible to have a discussion here without providing explicit disclaimers. Even with those disclaimers, we're constantly brigaded with red-herrings, non-sequiturs and ridiculous claims tilting at what is incorrectly perceived as Trump support.
It is difficult to even criticize Trump's policies, unless the criticism is one of the curated forms prescribed by the outrage-o-sphere.
Are you serious?
But as far as I can tell now, there's not any really clear definition of what counts as work under those visa (waivers), and the ambiguity was tolerated by all parties. So, in effect, the only reasoning is (like always) "this is illegal because we say so".
Thanks again for the info.
What, precisely, does this mean? I don't think it means "crossed from Mexico or arrived on a small boat". I think it might actually mean "at the border interview, they said the purpose of their visit to the facility was 'business meetings' rather than 'work'", and the legality hinges on the precise knife edge of the W word.
It would be really, really useful to clarify exactly what the rules are for someone entering the US under a visa waiver for business purposes are, because I don't want to see my co-workers thrown in a gulag.