A Hyundai facility in Georgia was raided by immigration enforcement agencies on September 4, leading to 475 immigrants who were just trying to live their lives being detained. The Department of Homeland Security claimed they suspect these human beings were living and working in the U.S. illegally.
The raid happened at a construction site for a battery plant at the $7.6 billion electric vehicle facility joint venture with LG Energy Solutions that employs about 1,200 people. The operation involved agents from multiple departments, including the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the IRS, according to CBS News. What a nightmare for these poor people.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to CBS News that it executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes.”
A shameful mess
Right now, the nationalities of these 475 people aren’t known, but South Korea is taking no chances with the mess that the U.S. government has become, as CBS News explains:
The South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was dispatching officials to the site and urged the U.S. Embassy in Seoul “to exercise extreme caution to ensure that the legitimate rights and interests of Korean citizens are not infringed upon.”
“The economic activities of Korean investment companies and the rights and interests of Korean citizens must not be unfairly infringed upon during U.S. law enforcement operations,” the Foreign Ministry said.
It wasn’t just construction workers who were taken in the raid, either, not that that makes it better. Executives and other employees at LG Energy Solutions and Hyundai were also taken into custody, according to the New York Times. LG Energy Solutions says it’s working with the South Korean government to get its employees, as well as Hyundai’s, released.
As it turns out, quite a few of the folks who were detained were in fact U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, according to Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations for Georgia who spoke with the Times. You know, you’ve really gotta ask yourself: how do these people sleep at night?
