In the first six months of the second Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 5,670 individuals in Georgia. Just four were South Korean nationals, according to federal data.
But Koreans improbably became the face of immigration enforcement in the state earlier this month, following an unprecedented raid on southeastern Georgia’s Hyundai Metaplant campus.
Federal authorities said the bulk of the 475 workers arrested hailed from South Korea. Korean media reports put the number of impacted Korean nationals at more than 300.
In the days since the raid, members of Georgia’s Korean American community have expressed shock and outrage, adding to higher-level diplomatic fallout between the U.S. and South Korea, two longtime allies.
According to the 2020 U.S. census, there were more than 71,000 people from Korea estimated to be living in Georgia that year, the fourth-largest immigrant group behind Mexicans, Indians and Jamaicans.
Park Eun-sek, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Atlanta, expressed “deep concern” over the Korean nationals’ arrest at the Hyundai facility.
“This operation is particularly shocking because it targeted the construction site of a leading Korean global company, an unprecedented event,” Eun-sek said in a statement. “It is deeply regrettable that this crackdown has delayed construction and tarnished the image of a leading Korean company globally.”
Ruby Gould emigrated to Savannah in 1980 and has watched the local Korean community evolve “almost overnight,” since Hyundai and several of the automaker’s South Korean-based suppliers launched operations less than three years ago.
What was a small, close-knit society of fewer than 3,000 people centered in a handful of churches has grown rapidly and is constantly adjusting to the transient nature of families moving to and from the Savannah area for temporary assignments.
As the leader of the Korean American Association of Greater Savannah, founded in 1974, Gould has become a much-in-demand liaison on many matters related to the Korean community.
She said both longtime residents and newcomers share the same reaction to last week’s raid: shock.
“It’s ruined the whole image of Georgia being welcoming to Koreans and the trust that’s been built,” said Gould, who earned U.S. citizenship 40 years ago. “Koreans have thrived here for decades, building small businesses and working in industry. Since the raid, my phone rings constantly.
“People have doubts.”
Speaking at a press event in Savannah on Monday, Sarah Park with the Korean American Coalition cited the project as a “symbol of economic growth and international cooperation.”
“But that promise has now been overshadowed,” she added.
In Savannah, Park said she had been speaking with community members “who are confused and afraid.” She described the people as hardworking, skilled professionals seeking to support their families. They are not criminals, she said.
“Families have been torn apart. Communities have been shaken. And the trust that once linked Georgia and Korea, and the United States and Korea, has been broken,” Park said.
The immigration enforcement operation, in the town of Ellabell near Savannah, has also roiled national politics. South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun called the raid “a very serious matter.”
“If U.S. authorities detain hundreds of Koreans in this manner, almost like a military operation, how can South Korean companies investing in the U.S. continue to invest properly in the future?” said Cho Jeongsik, a lawmaker from the liberal governing Democratic Party, according to an Associated Press report.
Some members of the country’s legislature have called for retaliatory investigations of U.S. citizens who may be in South Korea working illegally.
South Korean officials are arranging a charter flight for workers to return speedily back home.
“This is still a deportation. This is the outsourcing of deportation to another country,” said William D. Lopez, a University of Michigan expert on large-scale immigration worksite raids.
In both South Korea and Georgia, advocates for the Korean workers detained by ICE have said the painful episode could have been avoided had the U.S. government made more readily available the kind of work visas needed by the workforce at the Hyundai plant.
“The Hyundai LG plant required highly specialized subcontractor technicians to move the project forward. Visas were needed, but they were not granted at the scale required,” Park said. “Everyone, from the companies to government leaders, understood this reality.
“When technicians entered the U.S. on short-term visas to meet urgent needs, it was not about individual wrongdoing, but about a system that failed to align immigration policy with economic promises.”
Georgia House Minority Whip Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, is the son of Korean immigrants.
“From all the folks that I’ve been speaking with over the weekend, there’s a certain sense of betrayal. On the one hand, Korean Americans felt like they were welcomed with the billions of dollars being invested. And now they feel that … they’ve been abandoned, neglected, used for headlines,” Park said.
“I think especially for Asian Americans, this is a reminder that they’re also not safe. You know, when we’re talking about deportations, it’s not just isolated to the Hispanic community.”
About the Authors
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
