Troubling revelations have emerged from what U.S. officials are calling the largest-ever Homeland Security raid at a single site. This ICE operation shut down a Hyundai factory in Georgia and led to the arrest of almost 500 workers.
Employees at the electric car battery facility were allegedly shackled, held for a week in grim conditions, and now accuse federal authorities of serious human rights violations.
The fallout is the latest incident highlighting the Trump administration’s use of force in immigration enforcement as well as its willingness to disrupt major businesses and compromise international relationships.
Now repatriated to South Korea, the workers at the Hyundai plant, many of whom were highly skilled and working on state-of-the-art car production at the sprawling 2,900-acre complex, have described the moment when helicopters and armoured vehicles rapidly deployed armed agents throughout the site.
Speaking to The New York Times, six of those detained in the 6 September raid said they were still struggling to process what had happened to them.
One man, Park Sun-kyu, said he is seeing a doctor because he is now struggling to sleep.
“My main takeaway is that America is not a safe place to work,” Park said. “I don’t think I would go there again to work.”
During the raid, workers in the U.S. on ESTA, B-1, and B-2 visas were served arrest warrants, placed in handcuffs and chains, and transported by bus to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Folkston, Georgia.
The workers told The Times that they remain uncertain about why they were arrested, based on their visas, and that no one informed them of the specific laws they were allegedly violating.
Once in the detention center, the workers say they were packed into “pods” of up to 80 people, given meagre meals like ham-and-cheese sandwiches or meat gruel, and shared toilets separated from the common area by only a low wall and curtain.
They reported “smelly drinking water, moldy mattresses, dusty blankets, freezing air conditioning,” and said officials were slow to respond to requests for medical assistance.
They also claim their rights were never read to them, and that their cellphones were confiscated, leaving them unable to call their families, employers, or lawyers.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry has pledged to investigate claims of human rights violations.
The site is one of Hyundai’s most substantial investments in the US, and the raid has caused consternation in South Korea, which has built and operated factories in the U.S. successfully for decades.
In the wake of the raid, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung warned that some companies will now fear “establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies” unless the United States can promptly issue reliably enforced visas to foreign technicians.
“We are in an age of a new normal in dealing with the United States,” South Korean presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon Sik told reporters at the airport in Incheon when the detained workers were arriving.
Trump has said he wants to deport "the worst of the worst" criminals, but ICE figures have shown a rise in non-criminals being picked up. Rights advocates have denounced such raids.
Following the raid, the White House said that "any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations."
