South Korean worker tells BBC about panic and confusion during a Hyundai attack

A South Korean worker who witnessed a massive immigration operation at a Georgia car factory told the BBC about panic and confusion while federal agents descended the site and arrested hundreds.

The man who wanted to remain anonymous was in the factory owned by Hyundai and LG Energy when 475 people, including 300 South Korean citizens, were arrested, with some of them being taken to chains.

He said he found out for the first time about the attack on Thursday morning when he and his colleagues received a flood of telephone calls from the bosses of the company. “Ring on multiple telephone lines and the message was to turn off the operations,” he said.

As the news spread to the attack, the largest of its kind after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, the man said the panic family members tried to contact the workers.

“They were detained and left all their mobile phones in the office. They received calls, but we couldn’t answer because (the office) was locked,” he said.

According to US officials, some workers are trying to escape, including several who have jumped into a nearby pond from the sewer. They were divided into groups based on the nationality and status of the visa before being processed and loaded with multiple coaches.

About 400 state and federal agents had gathered outside the scattered factory complex of $ 7.6 billion, which was about half an hour away from Savannah before entering the site at about 10:30 on Thursday.

The 3000 acres complex opened last year and workers there assemble electric vehicles. Immigration employees are investigating alleged illegal employment practices at a battery factory for electric vehicles that are built in the compound.

The operation eventually became the largest operation to implement immigration of a site in the history of internal security investigations, staff said, adding that hundreds of people who were not allowed to work in the United States.

BBC Verify is looking at footage posted on social media and is obviously filmed inside the battery plant.

One video shows that men are arranged in a room as a masked man wearing a vest with the HSI initials – investigations on internal security – and by conducting Walkie -talkie, telling them: “We are internal security, we have an order to search the whole site. We need construction to stop immediately, we have to do all the work right now.”

The BBC checked an employee who has a legitimate right to work in the United States, Savannah, the closest city next to the massive car factory.

The man said he was “shocked but not surprised” by immigration operation. He said that the greater part of the detained workers were a mechanics for the installation of production lines on the site and were hired by a contractor.

He also said that a minority of the arrested were sent from the central office in Seoul and conducted training that the BBC failed to confirm.

The man said he believed that almost all workers had some legal right to be in the United States, but were of the wrong type of visas or their right to work expired.

BBC contacted Hyundai and LG Energy for comment.

In a joint statement published after RAID, Hyundai and LG Energy, they said they “cooperate with the relevant authorities on the activities of our construction site. In order to support their work, we stopped construction.”

Hyundai also said that “based on our current understanding, none of the detainees is directly hired by Hyundai Motor Company.”

He added that “is engaged in full compliance with all the laws and regulations in every market where we work.”

The BBC Verify also contacted the US Department of Interior Security (DHS) for comment and more details of why workers were detained and what they were doing in the plant.

On Friday, the day after the attack, the ice agent responsible for the operation, Stephen Schrand said all 475 detained were “illegally present in the United States”.

He said they were workers “who have entered various means in the United States, some illegally crossed the border, some who have entered through visas and have been forbidden to work, some of whom have visas and exceed their visas.”

The rabbit, called “low voltage service”, headed for an electric battery that is built in the same place as an existing Hyundai Car Factory.

Ice released the attacks on the attack showing federal agents arriving in armored vehicles and lined workers outside the factory, some are shown, chained together before being loaded with coaches.

Other images show two men in the river obviously trying to escape, and another man is pulled out of the water by agents who speak him in Spanish.

The worker we were talking to said he had sympathy for those who were detained, but he said the repression was not a surprise to the Trump administration. “Their slogan is America in the first place and if you work in America legally, you will have no problem,” he said.

The man said the time and the administrative obstacles involved in receiving US visas have encouraged foreign companies to reduce corners to complete projects on time, but now they may need to be reeled.

“I want to say that then it happens, many companies will think again about investing in the United States, as creating a new project can take so much more than before,” he said, adding that many detainees are specialists and finding local workers to replace them will not be easy.

When the BBC visited the site over the weekend, there were several visible signs of the attack on Thursday, although two security teams asked us to continue as we were shooting on the side of the road.

The electric car factory in Ellabel, Georgia is a huge complex that dominates the landscape and is a major source of work as the project was announced in 2022.

Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Camp welcomes the $ 7.6 billion complex, describing it as the largest project for economic development in the history of the country.

The impact of the endeavor is reflected in the resumption of the Korean American Association of a large savannah. “This is a growing community,” said Cho Dahi, president of the association.

Da -Dahye, who became a US citizen in the 1980s and is also known by his American name Ruby Gould, said the ice arrests had left people shocked.

She hopes that her threshold attack will not have a greater impact on US and South Korea relations. “For me, the image of a global, well -known company is also very shocking,” she said.

Additional reporting from Aisha Sembhi and Woongbee Lee