Immigration authorities said Friday, September 5, they detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, when hundreds of federal agents raided the sprawling manufacturing site in Georgia where Korean automaker Hyundai makes electric vehicles.
Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of Homeland Security Investigations, said during a news conference Friday that the raid resulted from a monthslong investigation into allegations of illegal hiring at the site and was the "largest single site enforcement operation" in the agency's two-decade history.
The Thursday raid targeted one of Georgia's largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, where Hyundai Motor Group, a year ago, began manufacturing electric vehicles at a $7.6 billion plant. The site employs about 1,200 people in an area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Savannah where bedroom communities bleed into farms. Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials have touted it as the state's largest economic development project.
Agents focused their operation on an adjacent plant that's still under construction at which Hyundai has partnered with LG Energy Solution to produce batteries that power EVs.
Court records filed this week indicated that prosecutors do not know who hired what it called "hundreds of illegal aliens." The identity of the "actual company or contractor hiring the illegal aliens is currently unknown," the US Attorney's Office wrote in a Thursday court filing.
The South Korean government expressed "concern and regret" over the operation targeting its citizens. Koreans are rarely caught up in immigration enforcement compared to other nationalities. Only 46 Koreans were deported during the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2024, out of more than 270,000 removals for all nationalities, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of US law enforcement," South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong said in a televised statement from Seoul. Lee said the ministry is dispatching diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in Atlanta to the site, and planning to form an on-site response team.
Immigration attorney Charles Kuck said two of his clients who were detained had arrived from South Korea under a visa waiver program that enables them to travel for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa. One of his clients, he said, has been in the US for a couple of weeks, while the other has been in the country for about 45 days. He did not provide details about the kind of work they were doing, but said they had been planning to go home soon.
Schrank told reporters in Savannah that while some of the detained workers illegally crossed the US border, others had entered the country legally but had expired visas or had entered on a visa waiver that prohibited them from working. He said some of those detained worked for the battery manufacturer, while others were employed by contractors and subcontractors at the construction site.
Schrank said he didn't know precisely how many of the 475 detained were Korean nationals, but that they made up a majority. No one has yet been charged with any crimes, he said, but the investigation is ongoing.
"This was not a immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks, and put them on buses," Schrank said. "This has been a multi-month criminal investigation where we have developed evidence and conducted interviews, gathered documents and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain a judicial search warrant."
He said most of the detainees were taken to an immigration detention center in Folkston, Georgia, near the Florida state line.
The Democratic Party of Georgia on Friday condemned the raid, with its chair, Charlie Bailey, calling the raids "politically-motivated fear tactics designed to terrorize people who work hard for a living, power our economy and contribute to the communities across Georgia that they have made their homes."
Kemp and other Georgia Republican officials, who had courted Hyundai and celebrated the EV plant's opening, issued statements Friday saying all employers in the state were expected to follow the law.
The Hyundai site sits on 3,000 acres (1,214 hectares) in a largely rural area of Bryan County, drawing in workers from several surrounding counties and communities, including Savannah. Hyundai began producing electric vehicles at the site last September. A few months later, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chairman Euisun Chung, during a White House appearance with Trump, credited the president with the company's decision to create more American jobs by building an EV factory in Georgia.
"Our decision to invest in Savannah, Georgia, creating more than 8,500 American jobs, was initiated during my meeting with President Trump in Seoul in 2019," Chung said at the March event.
Those arrested Thursday who fight deportation may be detained as their cases wind through immigration court. The number of people in ICE custody topped 60,000 in August, an all-time high.