Federal officials announced Friday they detained 475 people at a construction site on the Hyundai Metaplant campus near Savannah during a Thursday operation, the largest single immigration raid in the history of Homeland Security Investigations.
Steven Schrank, special agent in charge of HSI Atlanta, said the arrests stemmed from a monthslong investigation into alleged undocumented and illegal work at a battery plant under construction in Bryan County. The battery factory is part of Hyundai Motor Group’s 3,000-acre Metaplant site, a $12.6 billion project, including the battery facility, that has been touted by Georgia leaders as the largest economic development deal in state history.
“This, in fact, was the largest single site enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security Investigations across the country,” Schrank said at a Friday morning news conference in Savannah. HSI was founded in 2010 as a division within Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The operation included a criminal search warrant and involved the battery factory jointly developed by Korean companies Hyundai and LG Energy Solutions. The raid paused construction of the battery facility, but did not impact operations of the adjacent electric vehicle plant that opened in October, according to a Hyundai spokesperson.
Officials for Hyundai, LG and their joint venture said they are cooperating with law enforcement. LG told media outlets that executives and other employees of the Korean company were swept up in the immigration raid. A Hyundai spokesperson said none of its employees were among those detained.
Schrank confirmed that a “majority” of the 475 arrests were Korean nationals, but further details were not disclosed. Schrank said no charges have been filed as part of the investigation.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
While serving the search warrant and collecting evidence as part of a probe into alleged violations of employment laws and other matters, federal agents ascertained that hundreds of individuals on site did not have current lawful status, Schrank said.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson added that, “Any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations.”
“President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the United States the best place in the world to do business, while also enforcing federal immigration laws,” she continued.
The situation prompted concern among South Korea’s political leadership.
“The economic activities of our investment companies and the rights and interests of our citizens must not be unjustly violated during U.S. law enforcement proceedings,” Lee Jaewoong, a spokesperson for South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, said at a Seoul news conference Friday, according to multiple media outlets.
The arrests also spurred condemnation from Georgia Democrats.
“These raids are 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,” Charlie Bailey, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said in a statement.
Georgia State Patrol’s participation in Thursday’s operation comes at a time of close collaboration between the agency and ICE.
Credit: Courtesy of HMGMA
Credit: Courtesy of HMGMA
In March, Gov. Brian Kemp announced state troopers would help the federal government identify and arrest immigrants who lack legal status, through an ICE program that deputizes local law enforcement to perform some of the functions of immigration agents.
Kemp has also repeatedly touted recruiting Hyundai’s projects to Georgia. State and local leaders offered Hyundai a taxpayer-backed incentive package estimated at $1.8 billion. Hyundai and its subsidiaries are also involved in a battery factory in Bartow County and the expansion to Kia’s automobile plant in West Point.
A Kemp spokesperson said, “All companies operating within the state must follow the laws of Georgia and our nation.”
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Current
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Current
Labor scrutiny
The employment practices of Korean factories in Georgia have drawn scrutiny in the past.
In recent years, a spate of lawsuits filed in Georgia federal court have accused subsidiaries of Korean manufacturers Sewon, LX Hausys Ltd., Hyundai and Kia of exploiting skilled Mexican engineers in violation of immigration, labor and equal rights laws. In these cases, Mexican nationals have claimed they were lured to work underpaid menial jobs on factory floors in Georgia with fake offers of white-collar opportunities.
Company representatives have denied workers’ allegations and vowed to defend against them in court.
Labor advocates have told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution manufacturing companies are increasingly turning to third-party labor contractors to insulate themselves from liability in case violations of immigration or labor laws emerge inside their facilities.
The Hyundai electric vehicle factory’s construction in Bryan County, which met a lightning-fast two-year completion time frame, has drawn scrutiny over worker safety incidents. As of June, that included three deaths and 15 serious construction-related injuries, according to public records reviewed by the AJC.
Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA
Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA
On Friday, Schrank said contractors also played an important role in the Savannah facility.
“The (arrested) employees (who) worked for a variety of different companies that were on the site. It was not just the parent company, but also subcontractors,” Schrank said. “ … We continue to work on the investigation of who exactly worked for what companies.”
In 2020, another Korean manufacturer, SK Battery, made headlines in Georgia when federal authorities arrested 13 Korean workers employed in the company’s construction site. Months earlier, 33 Koreans were arrested at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport who were slated to work at the SK plant but lacked proper visas.
ICE custody
Schrank said Thursday’s raid is different from those across the country that have sparked controversy amid the escalation of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
ICE has raided facilities including farms, construction sites, restaurants and auto repair shops.
“This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses,” Schrank said. “This has been a multimonth criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews, gathered documents and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain a judicial search warrant.”
Yvonne Brooks, president of the American Federation of Labor—Congress of Industrial Organizations union, disagreed that Thursday’s operation is different from other ICE raids.
“This raid is the latest in an ongoing campaign of harassment that has targeted immigrant Georgians as they try to earn an honest living,” Brooks said. “Arresting and detaining workers, who are exploited every day and risk their lives every day on the job, creates an atmosphere of fear that terrorizes workers and their families and increases the workload burden on their co-workers.”
Most of those detained have been taken to an ICE detention center in Folkston, Schrank said.
Earlier this year, Charlton County officials approved a plan that would markedly increase capacity at the Folkston ICE facility.
Sitting fewer than 10 miles from the Florida border, the detention center can currently hold up to 1,100 detainees. That number would grow to nearly 3,000 under the county’s revised agreement with ICE.
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