The Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America is seen March 26 in Ellabell, Ga.
Mike Stewart/AP
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Mike Stewart/AP
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea on Friday expressed “concern and regret” over a serious U.S. immigration raid at a sprawling Georgia website the place South Korean auto firm Hyundai manufactures electrical autos.
South Korean Overseas Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong described the variety of detained South Koreans as “large” although he didn’t present a precise determine.
His ministry wouldn’t verify or deny South Korean media experiences saying that about 300 South Koreans had been detained in Georgia on Thursday. The Atlanta workplace of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which assisted immigration authorities on the website, posed on the social media website X that about 450 folks whole had been apprehended.
Hyundai’s South Korean workplace did not instantly reply to requests for remark.
Thursday’s raid focused considered one of Georgia’s largest and most high-profile manufacturing websites, touted by the governor and different officers as the biggest financial improvement undertaking within the state’s historical past. Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea’s greatest automaker, started manufacturing EVs a 12 months in the past on the $7.6 billion plant, which employs about 1,200 folks, and has partnered with LG Vitality Resolution to construct an adjoining battery plant, slated to open subsequent 12 months.
ICE spokesman Lindsay Williams confirmed that federal authorities performed an enforcement operation on the 3,000-acre (1,214-hectare) website west of Savannah, Georgia. He stated brokers had been targeted on the development website for the battery plant.
In a televised assertion, Lee stated the ministry is taking energetic measures to deal with the case, dispatching diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in Atlanta to the location, and planning to kind an on-site response crew centered on the native mission.
“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of U.S. law enforcement,” Lee stated.
The Division of Homeland Safety stated in a press release that brokers executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes.”
It didn’t say whether or not anybody was detained or arrested.
President Donald Trump’s administration has undertaken sweeping ICE operations as a part of a mass deportation agenda. Immigration officers have raided farms, building websites, eating places and auto restore outlets.
The Pew Analysis Middle, citing preliminary Census Bureau knowledge, says the U.S. labor power misplaced greater than 1.2 million immigrants from January by means of July. That features people who find themselves within the nation illegally in addition to authorized residents.
Hyundai and LG’s battery three way partnership, HL-GA Battery Firm, stated in a press release that it is “cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities” and paused building of the battery website to help their work.
Operations at Hyundai’s EV manufacturing plant weren’t interrupted, stated plant spokesperson Bianca Johnson.
