The South Korean worker tells the BBC of panic and confusion during the Hyundai raid

A South Korean worker who attended a massive immigration operation in a Georgia car factory told the BBC to panic and confusion while the federal agents descended on the site and arrested hundreds.

The man, who asked to remain anonymous, was at the factory which belongs jointly to Hyundai and LG Energy when agents of immigration and the application of customs (ICE) arrested 475 people, including 300 South Korean nationals, some being taken in chains.

He said he had first read the RAID on Thursday morning when he and his colleagues had received a deluge of telephone calls from the company’s owners. “Several telephone lines sound and the message was to close operations,” he said.

While the news spread on the raid, the largest of its kind since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, the man said that panicked family members tried to contact the workers.

“They were detained and they left all their mobile phones at the office. They received calls, but we could not answer because (the office) was locked,” he said.

According to US officials, some workers tried to flee, including several who jumped into a nearby sewer pond. They were separated into groups according to nationality and visa status, before being treated and loaded on several coaches.

Some 400 state and federal agents had gathered outside the complex expanding $ 7.6 billion, which is about half an hour from the city of Savannah, before entering the site around 10:30 am Thursday.

The 3,000 acres complex opened last year and workers assemble electric vehicles there. Immigration officials had investigated presumed illegal employment practices in a battery plant of electric vehicles that is built in the compound.

The operation ultimately becomes the largest operation to apply immigration to a unique site in the history of internal security surveys, said officials, adding that hundreds of people who were not legally authorized to work in the United States were detained.

BBC VERIFY examined images published on social networks and apparently filmed inside the battery plant.

A video shows men aligned in a room as a masked man, wearing a vest with the HSI initials – Internal security surveys – and holding a talkie -walkie, said to them: “We are internal security, we have a search warrant for the whole site. We need the construction to stop immediately, we need all the work to finish on the site at the moment.”

BBC VERIFY met the worker, who legally the right to work in the United States, in Savannah, the nearest city to the massive car factory.

The man said he was “shocked but not surprised” by the immigration operation. He said the vast majority of workers detained were mechanisms that set up production lines on the site and were employed by an entrepreneur.

He also declared that a minority of those arrested had been sent from the head office to Seoul and had done training, which the BBC could not confirm.

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

The BBC contacted Hyundai and LG Energy to comment.

In a joint declaration published after the RAID, Hyundai and LG Energy said that they “cooperate fully with the appropriate authorities concerning the activity on our construction site. To help their work, we have done a construction break”.

Hyundai also said that “according to our current understanding, none of those held is directly used by Hyundai Motor Company”.

He added it “is determined to comply with all the laws and regulations on each market where we operate”.

BBC VERIFY also contacted the American Department of Internal Security (DHS) for comments and for more details on the reason why the workers were detained and what they did at the factory.

On Friday, the day after the RAID, the ice agent in charge of the operation, Steven Schrank said that the 475 detainees were “illegally present in the United States”.

He said they were workers “who entered a variety of different means in the United States, some illegally crossed the border, some who came by waivering the visa and were prohibited from working, some who had visas and exceeded their visas”.

The RAID, nicknamed by “low -voltage operation” managers, targeted an electric battery plant which was under construction on the same site as an existing Hyundai car plant.

Ice published images of the raid showing that federal agents arriving in armored vehicles and aligning workers outside the factory, some being presented together before being loaded on the coaches.

Other images show that two men in a river apparently trying to escape, and another man transported water by agents who speak to him in Spanish.

The worker we have spoken of said that he had sympathy for those who had been detained, but said that a repression was not a surprise under the Trump administration. “Their slogan is America first, and if you work in America legally, you will not have a problem,” he said.

The man said the time and administrative obstacles involved in obtaining American visas had encouraged foreign companies to cut the corners in order to finish projects on time, but they may now need to reassess.

“I mean, after that, many companies will again think of investing in the United States, because the creation of a new project could take as long as before,” he said, adding that many of those who were detained were specialists and finding local workers to replace them would not be easy.

When the BBC visited the site during the weekend, there were few visible signs of the RAID on Thursday, although two security teams asked us to move on while we were turning on the side of the road.

The electric car factory in Ellabelll, Georgia, is a huge complex that dominates the landscape and has been a major source of employment since the project announced in 2022.

The Republican Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, praised the 7.6 billion dollars complex, describing it as the largest economic development project in state history.

The impact of the company reflected in the resurgence of the American Korean Association of the Grande Savanne. “It is a growing community,” said Cho Dahye, president of the association.

Ms. Dahye, who became American citizen in the 1980s and is also known by her American name Ruby Geld, said that ice arrests had left shocked people.

She hopes that the raid at her door would not have a broader impact on American-Korean relations. “It’s very shocking for me and the image of a global and well-known business,” she said.

Additional report by Aisha Simi and Woongbee Lee