Raid nets 475 people at Hyundai site in Georgia

Immigration authorities said Friday they detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, when hundreds of federal agents raided the sprawling manufacturing site in Georgia where Korean automaker Hyundai makes electric vehicles.

- By Kim Tonc-HyunG AND Russ BYNUM

THE HYUNDAI Motor Group Metaplant America is seen in Ellabell, Ga. The facility was raided Thursday.

Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of Homeland Security Investigations, said during a news conference Friday that the raid resulted from a months-long investigation into allegations of illegal hiring at the site and was the “largest single-site enforcement operation” in the agency’s two-decade history.

The Thursday raid targeted one of Georgia’s largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, where Hyundai Motor Group a year ago began manufacturing electric vehicles at a $7.6-billion plant west of Savannah that employs about 1200 people. Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials have touted it as the state’s largest-ever economic development project.

Agents focused their operation on an adjacent plant that’s still under construction at which Hyundai has partnered with LG Energy Solution to produce batteries that power EVs.

Korean government expresses ‘concern’

The South Korean government expressed “concern and regret” over the operation targeting its citizens.

“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,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong said in a televised statement from Seoul.

Lee said the ministry is dispatching diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in Atlanta to the site, and planning to form an onsite response team.