Seems Bad

The important thing to remember is we treat "everybody" like this, but some of these Koreans might be people who matter.

We got a vivid glimpse of what it looks like for harsh immigration policies to undermine growth and investment earlier this month, in Georgia, when immigration officials detained hundreds of South Korean nationals working at a battery plant in a small town outside Savannah. On Sept. 4, a large detachment of federal, state and local law enforcement descended on an electric vehicle battery plant operated by Hyundai and LG Electronics. The raid, which the administration described as one of the largest-ever single-location enforcement operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, was aimed at just four people. Officials detained nearly 500, the large majority of whom were South Korean workers brought to the plant to assist with its construction.

While it appears that some of the workers had entered the United States illegally or were present on expired visas, lawyers for others say that their clients had the legal right to work in the United States. The workers, who were held for more than a week, described terrible conditions.

“Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink,” The Hankyoreh, a daily newspaper in South Korea reported. “The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours.”

All lawlessness and lies.

On August 31, 2025, U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Ray issued a warrant to allow ICE to search the Georgia battery plant, a joint venture of Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, naming four Mexican nationals as “targeted persons.” (The Savannah Morning News obtained a copy of the search warrant.) Nothing in the warrant indicated ICE intended to arrest South Korean workers helping to set up a battery plant for electric vehicles slated to employ 2,000 U.S. workers.

On September 4, 2025, approximately 400 state and federal law enforcement personnel raided the battery plant. While they came upon 175 to 200 Latino workers, not all of them working unlawfully, ICE agents also encountered hundreds of South Korean workers.

Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney at Kuck Baxter in Atlanta, represents 11 individuals arrested in the raid and pieced together what happened at the facility. ICE did not bring Korean language interpreters—proof Koreans were not the intended target—but managed to determine that the South Koreans at the facility entered on B-1 visas or the Electronic System for Travel Authorization known as ESTA.

“Not thinking that B-1 and ESTA allow ‘after-sales service and installation,’ which is what the Koreans were doing in setting up the equipment to make the batteries at the facility, ICE agents decided on the spot to arrest all the South Korean workers,” said Kuck in an interview. One of Kuck’s South Korean clients had just arrived the night before and was sitting in a conference room in a business suit, attending a meeting, when arrested by ICE.

An important thing here - which "everyone" seems to be forgetting - is that even if people have real immigration violations, you don't have treat them like this, or anything close to like this. Just tell them to stop working and go home.