Those taken into custody after a raid at the Hyundai Motor-LG Energy Solution joint venture plant in the town of Ellabell were turned over to ICE for potential removal. Photo / Getty Images
A stretch of rural southeast Georgia, just outside Savannah, has been transforming rapidly in recent years, as a plan to create a massive United States manufacturing hub capable of producing nearly half a million vehicles per year has come to fruition.
The complex has embodied the ambitions of South Korean automakers wanting to compete in the US market.
It has also been a crowning achievement in a long campaign by Georgia officials to draw South Korean investment.
Until recently, crews had been busy building the latest piece of that effort, a plant making batteries for electric vehicles.
That vision has become clouded by uncertainty after federal immigration authorities raided the plant last week, halting construction. Nearly 500 workers — many of them South Korean citizens — were arrested.
The raids, described by government officials as the largest Homeland Security enforcement operation at a single site, have exposed growing strain that reaches from Seoul, South Korea, to Washington and even a small, unincorporated community like Ellabell, Georgia, where the plant is being built.
South Korea, an enthusiastic trading partner, expressed frustration with the US.
Within the Trump Administration, the arrests have revealed competing interests, as a push by the President to expand US manufacturing has collided with his aggressive crackdown on immigration.
And in Ellabell and the surrounding area, the raids have revealed conflicting emotions about how quickly the region is changing and over who is filling the jobs that are being created.
Law enforcement officials said the raid followed a months-long investigation into suspicions of unlawful employment practices at the HL-GA Battery Co. plant, a joint venture of LG Energy Solution and Hyundai Motor Group.
Margaret Heap, the US Attorney for southern Georgia, said in a statement that the operation had been intended to “prevent employers from gaining an unfair advantage by hiring unauthorised workers”.
Today, government officials with South Korea said they had reached an agreement with the US to free the South Korean workers and fly them back to that country.
But beyond that, many details of the raid and what the investigation found remained unclear, including which individuals were arrested and their immigration statuses, what roles they had been hired to fill and the conditions at the worksite. The investigation has not yet yielded criminal charges.
What is clear, though, is that the raid has sent shock waves across the Pacific, said Tami Overby, an international business consultant who formerly led the US-Korea Business Council at the US Chamber of Commerce.
“Talking to my friends last night, I had one guy say, ‘We’re getting mixed messages from the Administration: You want our money, but you don’t want us,’” Overby said.
“It had a chilling impact all across board rooms in Asia.”
In Georgia, local politicians and labour organisers have raised concerns about the possibility that people lacking permanent legal status were being hired to work at the site, where construction began in 2023, and whether labour conditions met legal standards. Three workers have died at the complex over the past three years.
Barry Zeigler, business manager of UA Local Union 188, which represents plumbers, pipe-fitters, welders and air conditioning technicians, expressed outrage over his members not being given more work at the site.
He said that 65 of them had been let go from the battery plant several months ago after being hired to install steel piping.
“Georgians were promised those jobs,” Zeigler said.
“I don’t have a problem with the Koreans being here and trying to make a living over here,” he added.
He said he had a problem with people who were not authorised to work “stealing our jobs”.
Neither Hyundai Motor Co. nor LG Energy Solution have commented on employment practices at the site.
LG Energy Solution acknowledged that its employees and those from partnering companies had been detained.
Hyundai said that none of its employees were being held but that a review had been initiated to ensure that outside contractors and partnering companies “maintain the same high standards of legal compliance that we demand of ourselves”.
South Korean companies have poured billions of dollars into US factories in recent years, becoming the top foreign investor in new projects in the US in 2023.
Much of that investment has been supported by federal subsidies passed during the Biden Administration for electric vehicles and semiconductors — and aggressively pursued by state governments, which have added sweeteners.
Hyundai alone has said it plans to invest US$21 billion between 2025 and 2028, on top of the US$20.5b it has already invested. The Hyundai-LG electric vehicle complex is slated to receive up to US$2.1b in tax breaks, in exchange for investing US$7.6b and employing 8500 workers by 2031.
The push has intensified this year, as US President Donald Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on automobiles. Those levies cost Hyundai more than US$600 million in the second quarter of this year, the company reported.
In July, with support from chief executives of the largest industrial conglomerates in South Korea, the country struck a deal with the White House that set 15% tariffs on all other imports from South Korea. In addition, South Korea pledged to invest another US$350b into the US.
Building that much in America all at once requires many thousands of construction workers.
Factory construction has boomed in the US in recent years as a result of laws subsidising semiconductor and clean energy equipment manufacturing, mostly in Republican districts in the industrial Midwest and Southeast.
Data centres to feed artificial intelligence models have kept many contractors occupied as well.
Amid that demand for workers, the Trump Administration essentially cut off the flow of immigrants who had been arriving at the southern border.
In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has begun increasing worksite enforcement operations, which are seen as a more efficient way to get immigrants lacking permanent legal status to leave the country in large numbers.
“The reality is right now that there’s a workforce shortage for construction labour pretty much nationally,” said Didi Caldwell, chief executive of Global Location Strategies, which helps companies find development sites.
On top of that, she said that hefty tariffs on parts and materials, as well as threats to the independence of the Federal Reserve, were spooking international investors — despite Trump’s promises to make it easy to build in the US.
“It’s like we’re running with a weighted vest on, and something like this just puts another few pounds in the vest,” she said.
Experts on the relationship between South Korea and the US said they were worried that the raid could have damaging consequences, undermining trust and fuelling resentments.
“Raiding a factory that has invested record amounts — that’s no way to treat a foreign investment,” said Mark Keam, president of the Korean American Institute, a policy research organisation.
Abraham Kim, president of the Council of Korean Americans, a non-profit in Washington, said the arrests struck him as counterproductive, especially as Korean Americans have made strides in pushing back against stereotypes of Asians being unwelcome in America.
“There has been a history of our community feeling like we’re outsiders,” he said. “These are not healthy stereotypes.”
Georgia has eagerly sought investment by South Korean businesses, with Governor Brian Kemp visiting the country twice since taking office.
South Korean companies have invested in plants making batteries, semiconductor materials and solar panels, as well as a large-scale bakery and food distribution centre.
On Thursday, Kemp announced that JS Link, a Korean biotechnology company, planned to build a magnet manufacturing facility in Columbus that would create more than 500 jobs.
The state has also enthusiastically embraced the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown.
The Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia National Guard have both worked closely with federal immigration enforcement agents, and the State Patrol was involved in Friday’s raid.
“In Georgia, we will always enforce the law, including all state and federal immigration laws,” the governor’s office said in a statement.
“All companies operating within the state must follow the laws of Georgia and our nation.”
The battery plant is part of the sprawling complex that represented a US$12.6b investment. Company officials projected that the infusion would have benefits across the state, including creating nearly 40,000 jobs.
In Ellabell, 40km from Savannah, the complex covers more than 1175ha. Company officials boasted of a parking lot with a canopy of solar panels and a 16ha park with trails, running tracks, sports fields, and picnic areas for employees.
Outside the complex, two-lane country roads now have five lanes jammed with traffic. Twenty-minute commutes now sometimes approach an hour, some residents said.
“It’s definitely not the same around here,” said Derriel Walker, a general foreperson with an electric transmission line company.
Jennifer Mutcherson, who has lived in Ellabell for more than four decades, said she wished the complex had not come.
“This is a small community,” she said, adding that she believed officials and business leaders had moved ahead without enough local input. “They didn’t ask us if they should bring it in.”
Sammie Rentz took over an old Piggly Wiggly location and invested US$400,000 to create Viet Huong grocery — an investment that had paid off because of the arrival of the complex, he said.
The store offers items that include Korean red bean paste and beef bone soup. The packaging on most items is in Korean, with English translations in small type.
Rentz said he wanted to cater to the newcomers. “It’s their store,” he said.
On Saturday, two men who said they were visiting from South Korea came into the store. One was wearing a bright yellow vest with “HL-GA BATTERY” printed on the back. The two men, who declined to give their names, described the situation as “very sad”.
“We’re trying to find our friends,” one of them said.
Rentz fears the raid will be bad for business — specifically, his.
“Korean workers keep this store going,” he said. “And now, that’s all messed up.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Jim Lynn, Lydia DePillis, Rick Rojas, Farah Stockman and Sean Keenan
Photographs by: XXX
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