A South Korean worker who witnessed a massive immigration operation at a car factory in Georgia has told the BBC of panic and confusion as federal agents descended on the site and arrested hundreds.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, was at the factory jointly owned by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 475 people, including 300 South Korean nationals, with some being led away in chains.
He said he first became aware of the Thursday morning raid when he and his colleagues received a deluge of phone calls from company bosses. Multiple phone lines were ringing and the message was to shut down operations, he said.
As news spread of the raid, the largest of its kind since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, panicked family members tried to contact the workers. They were detained and they left all their cell phones in the office. They were getting calls, but we couldn't answer because [the office] was locked, he said.
According to US officials, some workers tried to flee, including several who jumped into a nearby sewage pond. They were separated into groups based on nationality and visa status before being processed and loaded onto multiple coaches.
Some 400 state and federal agents gathered outside the sprawling $7.6bn factory complex, which is about half an hour from the city of Savannah, before entering the site at around 10:30 on Thursday. The 3,000-acre complex opened last year and employs workers who assemble electric vehicles. Immigration officials had been investigating alleged illegal employment practices at an electric vehicle battery plant being built on the compound.
The operation ultimately became the largest single-site immigration enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security investigations, officials said, adding that hundreds of people who were not legally allowed to work in the US were detained.
BBC Verify has been reviewing footage posted on social media and filmed inside the battery plant. One video shows men lined up as a masked man, wearing a vest with the initials HSI - Homeland Security Investigations - and holding a walkie-talkie, tells them, We're Homeland Security, we have a search warrant for the whole site. We need construction to cease immediately.
The witness, who is legally entitled to work in the United States, expressed his shock but not surprise at the immigration operation. He noted that the majority of those detained were mechanics employed by a contractor, and a minority were sent from South Korea for training, which the BBC has not been able to confirm.
The man believes nearly all the workers had some legal right to be in the US but were on the wrong type of visas or had expired rights to work.
The BBC has reached out to Hyundai and LG Energy Solution for comments about the incident. In a joint statement, the companies said they were cooperating fully with authorities regarding activity at their construction site and had paused construction to assist their efforts.
On Friday, ICE officials confirmed that all 475 detainees were illegally present in the United States with varied immigration statuses. The raid, dubbed Operation Low Voltage, targeted the electric battery plant under construction on the same site as the Hyundai factory.
The worker noted concern over the implications of the raid on U.S.-South Korean relations and the future of foreign investment in America. After this happened, many companies will think again about investing in the United States because setting up a new project might take so much longer than before, he remarked.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, was at the factory jointly owned by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 475 people, including 300 South Korean nationals, with some being led away in chains.
He said he first became aware of the Thursday morning raid when he and his colleagues received a deluge of phone calls from company bosses. Multiple phone lines were ringing and the message was to shut down operations, he said.
As news spread of the raid, the largest of its kind since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, panicked family members tried to contact the workers. They were detained and they left all their cell phones in the office. They were getting calls, but we couldn't answer because [the office] was locked, he said.
According to US officials, some workers tried to flee, including several who jumped into a nearby sewage pond. They were separated into groups based on nationality and visa status before being processed and loaded onto multiple coaches.
Some 400 state and federal agents gathered outside the sprawling $7.6bn factory complex, which is about half an hour from the city of Savannah, before entering the site at around 10:30 on Thursday. The 3,000-acre complex opened last year and employs workers who assemble electric vehicles. Immigration officials had been investigating alleged illegal employment practices at an electric vehicle battery plant being built on the compound.
The operation ultimately became the largest single-site immigration enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security investigations, officials said, adding that hundreds of people who were not legally allowed to work in the US were detained.
BBC Verify has been reviewing footage posted on social media and filmed inside the battery plant. One video shows men lined up as a masked man, wearing a vest with the initials HSI - Homeland Security Investigations - and holding a walkie-talkie, tells them, We're Homeland Security, we have a search warrant for the whole site. We need construction to cease immediately.
The witness, who is legally entitled to work in the United States, expressed his shock but not surprise at the immigration operation. He noted that the majority of those detained were mechanics employed by a contractor, and a minority were sent from South Korea for training, which the BBC has not been able to confirm.
The man believes nearly all the workers had some legal right to be in the US but were on the wrong type of visas or had expired rights to work.
The BBC has reached out to Hyundai and LG Energy Solution for comments about the incident. In a joint statement, the companies said they were cooperating fully with authorities regarding activity at their construction site and had paused construction to assist their efforts.
On Friday, ICE officials confirmed that all 475 detainees were illegally present in the United States with varied immigration statuses. The raid, dubbed Operation Low Voltage, targeted the electric battery plant under construction on the same site as the Hyundai factory.
The worker noted concern over the implications of the raid on U.S.-South Korean relations and the future of foreign investment in America. After this happened, many companies will think again about investing in the United States because setting up a new project might take so much longer than before, he remarked.
