An American flag flies above a piece of heavy machinery at the site of Hyundai Motor Group’s electric vehicle plant in Ellabell, Georgia, on Friday.
A sprawling Hyundai manufacturing plant in a quiet southeast Georgia community became ground zero on Thursday for one of the most extensive immigration raids in recent US history. The operation, months in the making, ended with 475 arrests, most of them Korean nationals.
As state troopers blocked roads leading to the plant and set up a security perimeter, nearly 500 federal, state and local officers poured into the sprawling battery production facility, still under construction.
Agents moved swiftly, lining up workers along the walls. Word of the raid spread across the property, triggering a scramble among workers who attempted to flee, with some running to a sewage pond and others hiding in air ducts.
The officers spoke with each worker, one by one, working to determine which were in the US legally, allowing some to leave and taking the rest into custody, moving them off-site and transporting them to the Folkston ICE Processing Center, officials said.
By 8 p.m., their work was done.
The high-stakes raid in Ellabell, about 25 miles west of Savannah, Georgia, was the result of what authorities characterized as a meticulously coordinated investigation involving multiple federal and state agencies and weeks of intelligence gathering, all converging in a pivotal day, marking the largest sweep yet in the current Trump administration’s immigration crackdown at US worksites.
Workers describe tense, chaotic scene
Federal agents descended on the Hyundai site Thursday morning like it was a “war zone,” a construction worker at the electric car plant told CNN Friday.
The worker, who asked not to be named to protect his privacy, said he was part of the first group of people rounded up by federal agents.
“They just told everybody to get on the wall. We stood there for about an hour and were then taken to another section where we waited. Then we went in another building and got processed,” the employee said.
Masked and armed agents gave orders to construction workers wearing hard hats and safety vests as they lined up while officers raided the facility, video footage obtained by CNN showed.
Agents asked each worker for their Social Security number, date of birth and other identifying information, the employee said. Workers who were cleared were then given a piece of paper stating “clear to depart” to show officers at the gate when leaving the plant, according to the employee.
Another worker told CNN affiliate Univision he hid in an air duct to evade capture.
“Everyone came out running and told us immigration has arrived,” the unidentified man said. “We hid ourselves in an air duct and it was really hot.”
During the raid, several people tried to flee, including some who “ran into a sewage pond located on the premises,” the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia said.
“Agents used a boat to fish them out of the water. One of the individuals swam under the boat and tried to flip it over to no avail,” the US Attorney’s Office said. “These people were captured and identified as illegal workers.”
The video shows workers at the Hyundai plant in Ellabell, Georgia, being detained after attempting to flee during Thursday’s raid.
Most of those detained were Korean nationals
A search warrant filed Tuesday in the Southern District of Georgia identified four people specifically to be searched, but authorities arrived with substantial personnel and equipment, suggesting an intention to conduct a broader sweep.
All 475 people taken into custody were illegally in the US, said Steven Schrank, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge. Some crossed into the US illegally, some had visa waivers and were prohibited from working, and some had overstayed their visas, he said.
The majority are Korean nationals, Schrank said, adding he did not have a breakdown of the nationalities of those arrested. Over 300 of the people arrested were South Korean, Foreign Affairs Minister Cho Hyun said on Saturday.
Mexico’s consulate in Atlanta said 23 of the workers arrested are Mexican, and representatives met with some of those workers at the Folkston immigration detention center more than 100 miles south of where the raid took place.
South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung told officials to take “all-out necessary measures” to support Korean nationals, Cho said following an emergency meeting in Seoul over the arrests.
“If necessary, I am prepared to personally travel to Washington, DC, to engage directly with US officials to resolve this matter,” Cho said.
The Korean Ambassador to the US and the Consul General in Atlanta had established an on-site response team that will “assess countermeasures, emphasizing the rights of our citizens and the economic activities of Korean businesses investing in the US must be protected from unfair violations,” Cho added.
Schrank noted some of the workers may have been contractors or subcontractors. A Hyundai spokesperson told CNN he does not believe anyone arrested was a direct employee of Hyundai Motor Company.
“We are reviewing our processes to ensure that all parties working on our projects maintain the same high standards of legal compliance that we demand of ourselves. This includes thorough vetting of employment practices by contractors and subcontractors,” the company said in a statement Friday night, adding, “Hyundai has zero tolerance for those who don’t follow the law.”
Being undocumented in the United States, whether by crossing the border without authorization or overstaying a visa, is typically considered a civil violation rather than a criminal offense. Employers across the US rely on the federal E-Verify system, launched more than 20 years ago, to check the legal work eligibility of new hires. However, officials in the Trump administration criticized the system for being unreliable, without putting forward a more effective alternative.
Among those detained was a lawful permanent resident held due to a prior record involving firearms and drug offenses. Such convictions can jeopardize an individual’s immigration status, as they may be classified as crimes of “moral turpitude,” said Lindsay Williams, a public affairs officer for ICE, according to a report by the Associated Press.
Williams also denied reports US citizens had been detained at the site. “Once citizens have identified themselves, we have no authority,” he said.
CNN has reached out to ICE for comment.
South Korea said it was dispatching diplomats to the site in response to the raid and added it had contacted the US embassy in Seoul to urge the US “to exercise extreme caution” when it came to Korean citizens’ rights.
Family members and friends have been struggling to locate the detainees or find out how to contact them, James Woo, communications director for the advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Atlanta, told the AP.
Woo added that many of the detainees’ families were in South Korea, as most of the individuals had been in the United States for business purposes only.
Georgia immigration attorney Charles Kuck told CNN two of his clients were detained at the raid after having arrived from South Korea under a visa waiver program which allows them to travel for tourism or business for up to 90 days.
One client arrived in the US last week, and the other arrived several weeks ago, he said.
“They were authorized to work in the US under a visa waiver,” Kuck said. “Each was pursuing activities consistent with the visa waiver program.”
The clients, both engineers, came to the US “to advise briefly on the work” and were planning to return to South Korea shortly, according to Kuck.
“This trip was actually part of their assigned duties abroad,” Kuck said.
Months of coordinated planning by multiple federal agencies
ICE and Homeland Security Investigations were accompanied by the Georgia Department of Public Safety, the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General, the FBI, DEA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the IRS and the Georgia State Patrol.
