US immigration raid South Koreans at Georgia US Hyundai plant
06-Sep-2025.
In the largest workplace raid the United States immigration authorities on September 5 raided a Hyundai factory in Georgia and arrested nearly 500 people under President Donald Trump's second term.
A majority of those detained at the 3,000-acre site, which was built by the Korean company to manufacture electric vehicles and has been operational for a year, are Korean nationals.
Urging the US government to respect the rights of its citizens, South Korea expressed "concern and regret" over the operation.
Agents executed a search warrant due to allegations of "unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes", according to a media report.
The special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Atlanta, Steve Schrank, said at a news conference on September 5, "This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses".
Schrank further said, "This has been a multi-month criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews gathered documents and presented that evidence... in order to obtain a judicial search warrant".
It was "the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of homeland security investigations", he said.
The raid raises a possible tension between two of President Donald Trump's top priorities, one building up manufacturing within the US and cracking down on illegal immigration and two it could also put stress on the country's relationship with a key ally.
"They were illegal aliens and ICE was just doing its job", President Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday.
When asked about the reaction from Seoul, Trump said: "Well, we want to get along with other countries, and we want to have a great, stable workforce.
"And we have, as I understand it, a lot of illegal aliens, some not the best of people, but we had a lot of illegal aliens working there."
"These [workers] are people that came through with Biden. They came through illegally."
US immigration officials raided Hyundai factory facility in Folkston, Georgia, and arrested nearly 475 people who were in the country illegally or working unlawfully.
The detainees were being held at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Folkston, Georgia, until the agency decides where to move them next.
Among those detained 300 people are reported to be Korean nationals.
Hyundai Motor Company said in a statement, it was "closely monitoring the situation and working to understand the specific circumstances".
"As of today, it is our understanding that none of those detained are directly employed by Hyundai," it said.
Hyundai's production of electric vehicles at the sprawling site was not affected, Reuters reported. Its partner in the battery joint venture, South Korea's LG Energy Solutions, had paused construction work at the site.
Videos on social media show agents lining workers up and telling them they have a warrant to search the facility. The agents can also be seen talking to some of the employees in the videos.
South Korea said it was dispatching diplomats to the site in response to the raid and that it had contacted the US embassy in Seoul to urge the US "to exercise extreme caution" when it came to Korean citizens' rights.
South Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement, "The economic activities of Korean investment companies and the rights and interests of Korean citizens must not be unfairly infringed upon during US law enforcement operations".
Trump has worked to bring in major investments from other countries while also levying tariffs he says will give manufacturers incentives to make goods in the US.
Partly as a way to avoid tariffs South Korean companies have promised to invest billions of dollars in key US industries in future.
Georgia's Governor, Republican Brian Kemp, had touted Hyundai's new electric vehicle operation as the biggest economic development project in the state's history, employing 1,200 people.
But President Trump also campaigned on cracking down on illegal immigration, telling supporters he believed migrants were stealing jobs from Americans.
After returning as US President for the second term Trump launched a massive effort across the country to round up people thought to be in the US illegally, hold them in detention facilities, and frequently deport them.
As many of those caught in the sweeps have ties to Latin American countries, people belonging to other countries have also been arrested.
